2/1/2002 11:05:50 AM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <>
wrote:
>
>Otherwise, 99% of the authors on this list
>for XML and XSLT books would be out of work.
Uhh, if the specs were simple and readable we would simply have to
make an honest living :~) I vaguely remember doing that, back in
the days before XML was the Next Big Thing. It wasn't so bad ... I'd
happily go back to a life of honest toil in the vineyards of software
if clear, simple specs were part of the bargain! <grin>
I completely agree with Frank Richards:
> If the people who have to implement specs can't understand them,
> the specs won't be implemented. And having to get help from the
> specifiers here on xml-dev goes against the whole idea of using an
> ISO spec in the first place: I and any other geek in the world
> should be able to figure out how to meet a spec, and
> whether an implementation meets that spec, without needing personal
> guidance from the author or a separate (and specific) book from
> Oxford University Press.
Or maybe, "the specs won't be implemented in an interoperable
manner." *IF* some of these "tight" ISO specs have powerful ideas in
there somewhere and the world is the poorer because they haven't been
implemented, recasting them in a form that is readable outside the
community that devoped them and defining a less "ugly" syntax should
be a high priority for their advocates.
