Re: [xml-dev] Is XML a language or a data format?

[Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

The problem not many years from now might be that electricity cannot
be produced because all there is to produce it is wood. Without
electricity there can be no computers. No computers equals no data. No
calendars. No ledgers. ...

CSS is least of our worries.
----
Stephen D Green

On Sun, 17 Jul 2022 at 07:03, Marcus Reichardt <u123724@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Perhaps, guardians of XML are guardians of civilisation.
>
> Would be nice if they were, but according to my experience on this
> list, XMLers can't even be bothered to look 25 years into the past
> when XML was subset from SGML. Rather, it seems more convenient to
> treat XML as an original invention coming from our savior W3C.
>
> Sorry for passive-aggressive tone, and it's not directly addressed at
> the post I'm responding to, but the problem number one that will
> prevent future generations to read today's content is CSS, its
> out-of-control self-serving specification process at W3C, and its
> useless specification prose.
>
> Just one very recent example of CSS misuse:
> https://cohost.org/blackle/post/42994-contraption
>
> Now tell me fairy tales about separation of "content", "presentation",
> and "behavior", and why these categories (dumb as they are) need own
> *syntax*. Well, the holy trinity of HTML, CSS, and JS would be a case
> worth discussing under the recently mentioned Wittgenstein philosophy
> eg the limits of my language are the limits of my world quote.
>
> Have a nice weekend,
> Marcus Reichardt
> sgml.io
>
> On 7/16/22, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps, guardians of XML are guardians of civilisation.
> >
> > As nuclear war peril looms, maybe we should print data and knowledge
> > considered essential to future generations of civilisation, such as
> > calendars and basic maths, onto sheets of plastic, perhaps by stencil holes
> > rather than perishable ink, and do so worldwide now in case of nuclear war.
> > Making use of the persistent nature of plastic. Before the world loses the
> > ability to read binary, make and use electricity and fossil fuels, etc.
> >
> > On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 08:02, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Incidentally a plausible corollary of this is that civilisation might
> >> collapse if both data and prose formats evolve into something which
> >> cannot
> >> be persisted between generations.
> >>
> >> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 07:22, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I am sure there are ample books devoted to good coverage of this. I
> >>> think of Document Engineering by R Glushko and T McGrath as one which
> >>> has this covered in a relevant XML-related context.
> >>> Data is compressed prose.
> >>> I could think of an example of a small UK charity publishing a record
> >>> of its Annual General Meeting in which it first publishes minutes of
> >>> the meeting, followed by a table of its annual accounts summary, which
> >>> can be seen as tabulated data. This data could instead have been
> >>> written as prose "In the first month of the year, January, we spent
> >>> £200 on office stationery. In the second month ..." but that would be
> >>> tedious to write and tedious to read. The table format circumvents the
> >>> tedium.
> >>>
> >>> The tabulation of data historically preceded prose in Sumerian times
> >>> around 3500 BC in Uruk where accounts of donations to the temple were
> >>> recorded with symbols impressed into stone or clay tablets in a table
> >>> format, and understood by convention. Only around 3000 did prose
> >>> sentence construction appear to us in the archaeological record of Tel
> >>> Fara and surrounding towns around 2800 BC, the Fara Period, at which
> >>> point poetry as well as prose started to be written with symbols on
> >>> clay and stone tablets. (Examples: Instruction of Sharappak, and the
> >>> Temple Hymn of Kesh.) So historically the tabulated data idea is very
> >>> ancient and very well understood and underpins civilisation through
> >>> all of history in many parts of the world. It allows the recording of
> >>> financial accounts, for example, and documentation of individual
> >>> payments. Yet prose is an alternative which is almost as ancient and
> >>> allows expression of ideas and recording of human sentences, such as
> >>> the minutes of a meeting. The two have coexisted side-by-side
> >>> throughout human civilization in most 'advanced' cultures. Arguably
> >>> the existence of these two forms of writing has brought about
> >>> civilisation by allowing the persistence of knowledge between
> >>> generations.
> >>>
> >>> That is my take
> >>> Regards
> >>> Stephen Green
> >>> ----
> >>> Stephen D Green
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 00:59, Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> > Hi Folks,
> >>> >
> >>> > I passed along the two Michael's comments to the colleague who
> >>> > asserted
> >>> that data formats don't have grammars. Below is his response. Do you
> >>> agree
> >>> with his response?  /Roger
> >>> > -----------------------------------------------------
> >>> > So I offer....
> >>> >
> >>> >       "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
> >>> > In
> >>> practice, there is." -Yogi Berra
> >>> >
> >>> > First, to clarify, when I said a data format "doesn't have" a grammar,
> >>> I did not mean that literally like in formal computer science (CS)
> >>> terms.
> >>> >
> >>> > I meant it figuratively. The term "grammar" in the CS sense, is just
> >>> not relevant. It lives alongside "spelling" and "algebra" as things one
> >>> had
> >>> to learn once (high school?), but these terms aren't used nor needed
> >>> with
> >>> reference to practical work with data.
> >>> >
> >>> > Rather, we data people use terms like structure, struct, record, and
> >>> layout. And of course "format".
> >>> >
> >>> > Are these just synonyms for "grammar"? I claim no. They denote things
> >>> that are simpler. E.g., one big difference is no recursion. Are these
> >>> terms
> >>> just "simplified grammars" in the CS sense? Yes. But the words used are
> >>> my
> >>> point here.
> >>> >
> >>> > Case in point: There is a military data spec document that is 5000
> >>> pages long and a large fraction of those pages describe the format of
> >>> each
> >>> of its messages.
> >>> > The term "grammar" does not appear anywhere in that 5000 page
> >>> > document.
> >>> > It is big, but it's 'just' a data format.
> >>> > -----------------------------------------------------
> >>> > My colleague went on to say that if you remove XML's recursion
> >>> capability, then it may be used as a data format; otherwise, it is a
> >>> language.
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>>
> >> --
> >> ----
> >> Stephen D Green
> >>
> > --
> > ----
> > Stephen D Green
> >