Re: [xml-dev] Please stop writing specifications that cannot beparsed/pr

[B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com>]

> On May 26, 2023, at 5:51 AM, Marcus Reichardt <u123724@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...

> I have a hard time imagining "standard writers“ (if there’s such a species) who haven’t heard of XML at this point. 

There is such a species. Actually, there are really 2 such species; with significantly different characteristics, and neither of which is guaranteed to have heard of XML. 

 - The vast majority of the world's standards are written as a volunteer effort 
   by subject matter experts: engineers, mechanics, materials physicists, 
   mechanics, biochemists, physicians, and other people with highly technical
   expertise in areas totally unrelated to the encoding of computer readable
   documents. 

   These people are often barely literate in the use of word processors and 
   if they have heard of XML are more likely to think of machine-to-machine
   information exchange than prose documents. 

 - The other group of "standard writers" are employees of standards development
   organizations. There are many such organizations world wide. Many of these 
   people have heard of XML, have heard their counterparts talk about XML at
   conferences, think they probably should be paying attention to ANSI/NISO STS
   but are not, and have never actually seen an XML editor or and XML document
   except excerpted on a slide at a conference. 

   These people are following the several efforts in the standards community 
   to develop "smart standards". "Smart standards" is what the standards 
   community is calling standards that are deeply machine processable ... 
   and with a few very special exceptions they don't exist yet.  
   
   These people, rightly in my opinion, are waiting to see their community 
   agree on an approach to making the requirements in standards machine 
   processable before committing time, money, and reputations to changing
   their word-processor based processes. 

   BUT ... many of the people working in the publishing areas of standards 
   development organizations are heads-down publishing people who support
   the volunteer efforts, guide groups of volunteers through complex 
   legal/regulatory processes, clean up word processing documents, proofread
   PDF, and make publications happen using decades old processes. If these
   people have heard of XML they dismissed it as new, trendy, probably expensive,
   and unimportant. 

-- Tommie
 

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B. Tommie Usdin			mailto: btusdin@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.	https://www.mulberrytech.com                                                                    
Phone: 301/315-9631                                                                                       
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