Re: [xml-dev] Xml Revisited

[rjelliffe@allette.com.au]

> I kept wondering how something so simple could use such convoluted terms.
> An entity to me was something in Entity Relationship modeling.  A file was
> something you included.  A compiland (Pascal) was something you imported -
> or a package in Java.

What is your point: there should only ever be one name for anything, and
it should be the same name that you use? I know COBOL people who get upset
that SGML uses "attribute" and "element" so incorrectly.  Actually, maybe
you do have a point: maybe standards should have an explicit note about
terms that have multiple uses in the wild (ISO standards all have a terms
and definitions section for this purpose.)

That entities are not what we would expect is not a compelling reason for
not having them, is it? (Indeed, the failure of XInclude may show that the
entity mechanism was in fact pretty practical and could be usefully
revived.)

> Also the name Extensible Markup Language is a misnomer.  XML is not a
> language but a general meta grammar for creating and number of
> "languages".

Well, it certainly is a language in CS terms, because a formal language is
just syntactic, and XML certainly is a grammar.

Cheers
Rick