Re: [xml-dev] An inquiry into the nature of XML and how it orients our perception of information
The semantics in XML are extrinsic, not intrinsic.
Liam,
I think that statement alone has a huge impact upon the way that people think about XML processing. The vast majority of programmers out there work upon the fundamental assumption that their semantics are fixed and immutable, beyond those that they specifically extend. Certainly, anybody who has adopted the Strousup OOP model feels this way ... type is intrinsic, objects, once created, maintain their own identity (even in the face of changes of state), and internal state is both protected and hidden. None of this is true with XML pipe processing. You can create some object-like behavior (especially if you are willing to lose declarativeness as a primary characteristic, which is unfortunate) in languages such as XQuery with XQUF support, but none of the pillars of OOP - polymorphism, inheritance, or encapsulation - are intrinsic to XML documents. Shifting to this view, however, requires that you step outside of your assumption that reality is complete and whole in and of itself and instead is simply a series of cleverly constructed sets, rebuilt meticulously every 10^-43 second.
-- Kurt
