Re: [xml-dev] Marketplace XML Vocabularies

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> A specification could provide just the meaning of the <Author> element, perhaps something like this:
> 
>     Author: a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.
> 
> The meaning is nice, but what effect should result from an application
> processing the <Author> element? That, it seems to me, is vitally
> important for a specification to provide. Do you agree? 

No, disagree completely. Much of the value of declarative markup is that
processing is _not_ specified. A document means what it means and lasts
for ever. The processing model used by today's generation of
applications is just a temporary artifact of the technology and
interfaces being used to present the document. It needs to be specified
somewhere but it is separate from the specifcation of the markup. (Which
is one reason why many people are concened about the style of definition
of html5 which places DOM interaction as a primary part of the language
definition.)

David