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

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

Actors always have to be reminded when playing Hamlet that there is at least one person in the audience who doesn't know the plot.

I think you are far too complacent about what constitutes universal knowledge. It might be true that everyone in the English-speaking world over a certain age knows who Marilyn Monroe was, but how many teenagers in China know?

Contrariwise, I've come across Americans who assume that it is universal knowledge how many cents make a dime, or what age a child is when they reach 5th grade, and such assumptions just show how little they know of the world.

Michael Kay


> On 28 May 2023, at 03:38, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> On Sat, 27 May 2023 08:34:38 -0400
> B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com> wrote:
> 
>>> On May 27, 2023, at 12:26 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have a hypothesis that such wilfully-ignorant, non-geeky, non-hackery,
>>> people are becoming less influential, less attractive, and rarer ...  
>> 
>> I am of a different opinion. 
>> 
>> There are far too many knowable things for anyone to have deep knowledge of
>> all of them. Some people choose to know a little about many things
>> (generalists), some people choose to know a lot about a few things
>> (specialists). Generalists seem to have an easier time in life than
>> specialists. Specialists seem to be the people who get important things done.
>> Slighting specialists because they are not generalists (or specialists in
>> some topic other than their specialty) is unhelpful; insisting that they make
>> the time and devote the energy to learn skills outside their area of
>> expertise is an effort to dilute their genius, and likely to fail.
>> 
> 
> I discussed generalism vs. specialism in "sherlock holmes about Awk":
> https://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1991.html . noone can or should be a 100%
> specialist unless you expect people to forget that 1+1=2, or that there are 12
> months in a year. "One does not simply not Know who Marilyn
> Monroe is" [
> https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/image-macros/indiv-nodes/not_know_marilyn_monroe.xhtml
> ]:
> 
> [[
> 
> Some have not heard of Sarah Bernhardt, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Ava
> Gardner, or whoever, but everyone has heard of Monroe.
> 
> She is, in a sense, a litmus test.
> 
> ]]
> 
> I know vim/vi fairly well, but dont consider it essential knowledge given text
> is text, and there are many other text editors.
> 
> OTOH, I dont know how to cook because I earn much more than 100 USD/day.
> 
>> To circle back to the discussion of why standards are written in XML: 
>> I want the geeky hackery people to make it so easy to do things we know will
>> be long-term helpful (such as create standards in tractable, long-term stable
>> formats) that the specialists can do it without knowing anything about it. 
>> 
>> Our win will come not when we bully the ignorant into learning our way but
>> when we make our way easy, invisible, and attractive to people who are paying
>> attention to other things. 
>> 
>> -- Tommie 
>> 
>> =================================================================================== 
>> B. Tommie Usdin			mailto: btusdin@mulberrytech.com
>> Mulberry Technologies, Inc.	https://www.mulberrytech.com
>> Phone: 301/315-9631
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Mulberry Technologies, Inc.: A Consultancy Specializing in XML for Prose
>> Documents
>> ===================================================================================
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
> The Human Hacking Field Guide - https://shlom.in/hhfg
> 
> If you have the same ideas as everybody else, but have them one week earlier
> than everyone else — then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have
> them five years earlier, you will be named a lunatic. ( Barry Jones )
> 
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - https://shlom.in/reply .
> 
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