Re: Seduced by Markup

[cbullard@hiwaay.net]

The first thing I do with a DTD is get rid of the parameter entities.   
IOW, what I care about is scanning it quickly to figure out the  
structures.  I let the engine do the actual validation.  Occasionally,  
I get these wrong and then I am happy to let the machine correct me.   
Once a DTD has been heavily parameterized, even where named well, a  
lot of context disappears.

Understand that my task at hand for the first time in my oddly  
disjointed career is to write the FOSI from scratch without XSLT.  Old  
School. (not my choice; given as a requirement).  Having to switch  
from a DTD-declared system to an XSD declared system, get the business  
rules from the first and then apply them to the second so the third  
thing, the PDF rendered document, hides all of that and adds the stuff  
that the XSDs didn't have slots for (say TMIN numbers, say TOCs, say  
two way links) and in the output it covers all of that in a standard  
hierarchically numbered document are part of the "challenge".   Note  
that with the sorta-exceptions of specvals that behave sorta-like  
if/thens, the programming code is in the editor and renderer black  
boxes.

This is a "data drive it, stupid" *epic* (inside joke).

It's been... fun... like hitting one's head against a wall to figure out which
wart bleeds first.   OTOH, it is a revelation a day about why certain  
decisions for XML design make sense, when to break the schema, how to  
apply an out-of-band wrapper document, and so on.  As I said:  Old  
School.  At times like this I am very glad that I was around when SGML  
was a draft because I usually know where the hidden rocks are, who  
made a map of the river and how to read it.  In this thread which I  
read with some entertainment value, I have sympathy for those who have  
not watched the adventure from jump street.  We earned our grey beards  
one crusty hair at a time.  It must be real hell to do it now.

I'm orchestrating a Jacques Brel song this month to record later, so  
the music metaphor is on my mind.  He's a great one to study for the  
surface simplicity of a chord progression enabling an easy melody that  
gets it's soul and movement from the accidentals in the harmonies.  He  
was a master of tension realized as emotion.  Rock and folk just  
aren't enough these days.

So it is with XML: learn until you die at the desktop.

len

Quoting John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>:

> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 11:06 AM, <cbullard@hiwaay.net> wrote:
>
> "So the advantage of DTDs is that they are gibberish to all?"
> > No.  The advantage is almost everything a human needs to read to interpret
> > them is in one place.   XSD may be richer in types and a parser writer's
> > wet
> > dream, but as a simple human lookup, it sucks.
> Sure, but I wasn't comparing DTDs to XSD at all, but to RNG compact syntax.
>  It's true that the pieces can be pretty scattered because you can create
> arbitrary named patterns, but that's actually *less* arbitrary than
> parameter entities.  The advantage of spreading things out in RNG compact
> syntax is *so that* you can create better, clearer names, a facility that
> can obviously be abused.
>
>
> > MODERATO (quit bitching about the key signature and just play it).
> (grin)
>
> When my daughter was taking piano lessons, she wanted to learn some pop
> piece of the day or other, I've forgotten just what.  So I went across the
> street to Schirmer's (eheu fugaces!) and bought the sheet music of a piano
> reduction.  It was *way* beyond her ability to even read the notation,
> because the timing of modern performance is so ill-matched to the way piano
> scores are still written.  It's no accident kids are still learning on
> pre-20th-century stuff: at least you can learn to read it easily.
>
> On the literary side, the reason Milton's syntax in _Paradise Lost_ is so
> opaque, apparently ("Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that
> forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our
> woe with loss of Eden, till one greater man restore us, and regain the
> blissful seat — sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top of Horeb or of
> Sinai didst inspire that shepherd who first taught the chosen seed in the
> beginning how the heavens and earth rose out of chaos" is the first
> sentence!), is that he needs to reconcile three things:
>
> 1) Getting the sentences to be correct and grammatical English (the verb is
> "sing", and it's a command to the Muse).
>
> 2) Fitting the meter
>
> 3) Getting the sequence of images (disobedience, fruit, tree, death, world,
> woe, Eden, Jesus, heaven, muse, Mt. Horeb, Mt. Sinai, shepherd, the Jews,
> Creation, heaven, earth, chaos) in the right order.
>
> Getting all of that right means simplicity and clarity are dropped
> overboard early.
>
> --
> GMail doesn't have rotating .sigs, but you can see mine at
> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/signatures