Re: [xml-dev] Why is terseness of minimal importance?

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On 14/01/2022 03:26, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> The underlying reason is not technical but economic.
[snip good stuff]
> By the 1990s that was all on the way out, including that new cheap 
> fingers were now viable, offshore.

Not for authoring. The offshore fingers can't write my book for me
unless I use dictation.

> And people who typed in text editors had little voice, 

Still do.

> while those who claimed we would all use tools to shield us from the
> markup were well represented.
And utterly wrong. After 25 years there is still no markup-hidden XML
editor usable by non-XML-knowledgeable writers/authors. So people who
write stuff use Word. Or Markdown, if the document content is simple
enough. Fortunately publishers are still willing to pay the price, or to
pass it off onto the author, which is IMNSHO unfair.

> It could recognise numbers as well as string literals as attribute values. 

Which I suggested in pre-XML days, only to be told it was silly and
no-one would ever need it :-)

Peter