Re: [xml-dev] Should one adopt the tag naming convention of anexisting X

[cbullard@hiwaay.net]

In the mil world, there is still a lot of document applications  
developed in Word and delivered in XML/PDF.  The document authoring  
realm is pretty big in terms of people doing it.  There are different  
notions of convenience.

I look at the ponderous 1500 page docs we deliver in rich tagged  
formats and then I look at the itty bitty messages in pointy brackets  
that might better be handled as JSON or even CSV and I wonder about  
the trendyness of the next new thing.  We probably didn't do the  
programmers a huge favor with insisting on wall to wall XML but the  
longest lived XML (lifecycle) and most expensive per tag is almost  
always a document.

I don't think too many human beings are reading the XML we deliver.   
They are validating it, inspecting the choices made given the options  
in the DTD polyglot then sending us long memos in Word telling us what  
they actually prefer, nay, insist on despite the face that all the  
CDRL cited was a document with best practices that cite the DTD in a  
separate document with a single line citation and no other details.   
Then they pass it on to the people with the software to slice and dice  
it into multiple products.

The majority is exchanging and reading the Word files.

len

Quoting Alex Muir <alex.g.muir@gmail.com>:

> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org>wrote:
>
> Seems to me this all depends...
>
>> The convenience of a programmer should not be placed over the readability
> of the data.
>> Business users take precedence over programmer convenience.
>
> I would agree with this if say writing docbook or dita where someone pseudo
> technical is getting into the xml but outside of the document authoring
> realm I would think you would want to "balance convenience with readability"
>
> What is an example of a business user then? Docbook author? I would think a
> large percentage of the business users of xml people I assume who gain some
> benefit of a xml process occurring on a server somewhere that makes them
> money can't read xml and don't care to and would rather read the resulting
> website or document content. No?
>
>
> -- XML is so versatile so would the markup be. --
>
>
> --
> Alex Muir
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