Re: [xml-dev] SGML complexity

[Rick Marshall <rjm@zenucom.com>]

flat earth was very popular as an idea for a while too - even though a 
minority knew it was absolutely wrong.

which brings us to the even deeper topic - why is something popular? 
dictated by religion? marketing? commercial interests?

xml's future is tied up in all these things and more. as is xslt, and sax.

rick

Nathan Young -X (natyoung - Artizen at Cisco) wrote:
> Hi.
>
>   
>> Sure that figures _only_ assure us that there exist more 
>> books on PHP or
>> JS than XSLT on Amazon database.
>>
>> But it is an usual practice in many fields sizing the 
>> activity/popularity
>> in a field from the quantity of stuff is being written about. 
>>     
>
> It's usual practice in all kinds of fields, especially politics, but
> more generally anywhere that uninformed public opinion is assumed to
> matter, to choose and present slices of data primarily on the basis of
> how well they fit your agenda.
>
> The three things I've seen argued on this list where a variety of
> stastical garbage has been mustered in support of subjective viewpoints
> are:
>  - XSLT is more/less powerful than (technology X)
>  - XSLT is more/less easy to learn than (technology X)
> and now:
>  - XSLT is more/less popular than (technology X)
>
> What would we gain by proving a particular answer to any of the above
> questions, even assuming such proof was possible?
>
> ---->N
>
>   
>> E.g. more
>> papers and books devoted to string theory means that string theory -as
>> attempt to quantize gravity- may be more popular than LQG or
>> triangulations. Of course, this offers us just an 
>> orientation; it is not
>> law.
>>
>>     
>>> Furthermore, "popularity" involves a notion of "preference" 
>>>       
>> and should
>>     
>>> be clearly defined before we try to throw figures (the 
>>>       
>> figures you give
>>     
>>> seem to be more relevant to "visibility" than "popularity").
>>>       
>> <blockquote>
>> The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the
>> popularity of programming languages. The index is updated 
>> once a month.
>> The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of 
>> skilled engineers,
>> courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines 
>> Google, MSN,
>> and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that 
>> the TPC index
>> is not about the best programming language or the language in 
>> which most
>> lines of code have been written.
>> </blockquote>
>>
>> [http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm]
>>
>>     
>>> Eric
>>>
>>> --
>>> GPG-PGP: 2A528005
>>> Lisez-moi sur XMLfr.
>>>                        
>>>       
>> http://xmlfr.org/index/person/eric+van+der+vlist/
>>     
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>     
>>> Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            
>>>       
>> http://dyomedea.com
>>     
>>> (ISO) RELAX NG   ISBN:0-596-00421-4 http://oreilly.com/catalog/relax
>>> (W3C) XML Schema ISBN:0-596-00252-1 
>>>       
>> http://oreilly.com/catalog/xmlschema
>>     
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>>
>> Juan R.
>>
>> Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
>>
>>     
>
>
> !DSPAM:4500500e193205315134984!
>
>