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   Re: [xml-dev] Improving XML desing?

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Peter Hunsberger said:
> On 5/10/06, juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com
> <juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com> wrote:
>> Michael Kay said:
>> >> My interest in this list is for discussing if some of ideas
>> >> developed from the CanonML program can be implemented in a
>> >> future XML specification.
>> >>
>> >> I am not interested in debate about weakness or strengths of
>> >> the CanonML approach here.
>> >
>
> Most people here don't have time to try and guess what you want to talk
> about.

Then i wait can be understood i have not time for replying some irrelevant
messages and questions.

> If you post something to a mailing list the entire
> contents of the post become fair game for people to discuss.  They are
> not going to play by some arbitrary rules you try and impose after the
> fact.
>
>> > How can you discuss whether the ideas are suitable for incorporation
>> into XML without discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the
>> ideas?
>> >
>> > Michael Kay
>> > http://www.saxonica.com/
>>
>> "[...] for discussing if some of ideas developed from
>> the CanonML program [...]"
>>
>> is not equal to
>>
>> "[...] debate about weakness or strengths of the CanonML
>> approach [...]"
>>
>> First belong to *ideas/philosophies* about markup languages and data
>> storage. Second belong to specific *implementation* of a particular
>> language.
>>
>> For example, a general idea is one can mark either tags or the text.
>> If you choose mark tags (which is ideal for documents) you can
>> implement (this general idea) in different ways (TeX, XML, or liminal
>> implementations):
>>
>> \em{XML can be improved}
>>
>> <em> XML can be improved </em>
>>
>> [em}XML can be improved{em]
>>
>> Discussions about my specific usage of double colons or the special
>> notation for empty tags or if i use "]" instead of ")", belong to
>> criticism to the specific CanonML proposal and I will not discuss it
>> here. If anyone is interested that could be debated in Canonical
>> Science Today.
>>
>> However, questions as "XML has model for metadata, but has not model
>> for metametadata, we could implement this similar to,
>>
>> <tag a={b='metadata'}="metadata">Data<tag>"
>>
>> would be of interest (and i am interested) here.
>>
>
> So in other words you want us to focus on the ideas you have and not the
> implementation? If that's the case, you should separate the two them
> before presenting them to us.  If you want no discussion of the details
> of  the "CanonML" implementation then I'd suggest you start over with a
> new post to this list that does not even mention CanonML.  Instead ask
> only about the _ideas_ you want to discuss, for example, whether there
> is any need for including some kind of 2nd level
> metadata representation within XML.
>
> IMO, the answer to this particular question is no.

This sound "no" may kill any debate. I just wonder that others do not
agree; e.g. Jeni Tennison.

> Metadata can be
> applied recursively easily enough and the existing XML mechanisms of id
> and idref already serve to allow arbitrary graph structures
> relating multiple levels of representation (metadata, metametadata,
> metametametadata,....) without the need for some new syntax that
> imposes new levels of incompatible parsing complexity.  IE:
>
>     <foo id="123">Data</foo>
>
>     <bar idref="123">metadata</bar>

Difficult to see that "easiness" in the model you typed. This may be dut
to my lack of skill. Still the situation is poor, because i do not
understand why liminal, for example, ignores the way you propose.

Moreover, i find amazing that when minimal-simple XML was proposed, many
folks rejected the absence of attribute model for metadata. For instance,
Tim Bray wrote about metadata

<blockquote>
XML Has Both Elements and Attributes, Why? · When I first learned about
SGML, XML's predecessor (this would be in 1987) I had the same reaction,
and single-handedly coerced the markup of the Oxford English Dictionary
online text into an attribute-free style that lasted some years.

Today I observe empirically that people who write markup languages like
having elements and attributes, and I feel nervous about telling people
what they should and shouldn't like. Also, I have one argument by example
that I think is incredibly powerful, a show-stopper:

<a href="http://www.w3.org/";>the W3C</a>

This just seems like an elegantly simple and expressive way to encode an
anchored one-way hyperlink, and I would resent any syntax that forced me
to write it differently.
</blockquote>

Maybe he is unaware of your proposal

 <a id="123">the W3C</a>

 <href idref="123">http://www.w3.org/</href>

This class of double attitude one often find in the XML community is
really perplexing. Is this politics or some kind of non-standard logic is
thougt in academia and i unknow?

> (or vice-versa if you have some precise syntax in mind that you want to
> argue instead of semantics,  this time around...)
>
> --
> Peter Hunsberger


Juan R.

Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)







 

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