RE: [xml-dev] Fixing what's broke

["Yogesh Deshpande" <Y.Deshpande@uws.edu.au>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Fennell [mailto:Philip.Fennell@marklogic.com] 
Sent: Friday, 10 December 2010 8:51 PM
To: stephengreenubl@gmail.com; Ramkumar Menon
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Fixing what's broke

Stephen wrote:

> But hasn't HTML succeeded even more so than XML? 
> And hasn't that partly been down to it making assumptions 
> about what 'everyone understands'?

You make a convincing argument from the point of view of the visual
representation on mark-up in a browser. If there are missing end tags
then a browser will, more than likely, display something that a human
can decipher reasonably quickly. However, for data this is less likely
to work. For a start, financial reporting and transactions would suffer
greatly under a scheme that permitted "making assumptions about what
'everyone understands'".

Regards

Philip Fennell
Consultant
MarkLogic Corporation

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I'd back that up completely.  In my current project, I have to deal with
standard terminology in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction
(AEC) sector.  Not surprisingly, there are many standards, within
Australia (where I live and work) and globally.  So far, even dealing
with only a few glossaries, I've run into multiple definitions of things
like a 'basin', some of which are mere rearrangements of the same words.
And we are not even talking about spelling variations which pose few
problems for human readers but fail to yield proper results in ordinary
automated searches.  HTML tags are predefined which allow browser
writers to make some assumptions.  What assumptions can one make in the
XML arena?

My two bits - I'm only standing on the shoulders of giants!

Yogesh Deshpande

University of Western Sydney, Australia
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