Re: [xml-dev] KML is very extensible ... but why?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

I like these, though I think autocorrect has done some strange things.  
I'll reply as I think it it was meant, and let me know if I'm wrong in 
my guesses about the questions in addition to my answers.  (Which fits 
the topic perfectly, actually!)


On 4/23/2018 12:31 AM, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> Two quickies.
>
> Shared synth good, shared semantics bad. But does a schema really 
> special syntax?
This reminds me of an angry comment from someone after a Walter Perry 
talk long ago.

"Doesn't he know that today's semantics are tomorrow's syntax?"

It can work like that, but I don't think it has for a while. Perhaps 
we're just in a lull.  I read schemas as an effort to make that kind of 
shift, but I don't see that shift happening.  Or, for now, profitable.

> Does a schema share semantics or just advertise them?
Too many people on too many projects have claimed that sharing (and 
standardizing) the meaning of things is the point of schemas.  It seems 
to work better for gathering funding.

While people are certainly willing to pay for advertising, I don't think 
that is what they often claim to be doing here.  Worse, we seem to live 
in a world in which we can give people advertisements and they mistake 
them for stern reality.

Schemas can absolutely be useful, but our tendency to make them into 
prisons also makes them dangerous. (And yes, people say that XML syntax 
is similarly imprisoning.  I tend to disagree about that part, but don't 
worry much about convincing them any more.)

Thanks,
Simon