"N. C a r r o l l" wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > It's not that I don't understand or agree to the need for modular
> > reuse (heck, I wrote the modular XHTML DTDs so I'm big on m12n),
> > but that as you say, I don't either know how quite to proceed
> > given our current pool of tools and the direction XML is going
> > with namespaces et al, which may *seem* to promote such things
> > but seems to me to simply be getting inordinately complex.
>
> You mean fragmenting data structures into too many namespaces?
Well, a whole host of problems relating to what I feel is confusion
over the role of markup, the supposed "attachment" of semantics to
markup, the concepts of names, namespaces, addresses and identity,
the separation between object and reification of object, etc.
It's too bad we couldn't all go back to school for six months and
take refresher courses in information theory, but unfortunately
we'd deal with academics who would be in the same boat as us -- I
think we're all too ahead of the curve sometimes for our own good.
It'd be nice to see us figure out what we've got in front of us
before jumping ahead into the next territory, but that's human
nature I suppose. This coupled with the desire to be clever is
leading us into morasse of complex markup that purports to solve
problems few if any even understand. Not to pick on XML Schema
(more than I've already) but I'm struck by a systems theory view
that says that the process is overloaded with input. I think this
is true of our industry right now.
Murray
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim, SGML/XML Grease Monkey <mailto:altheim@eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, 1601 Willow Rd., MS UMPK17-102, Menlo Park, CA 94025
america was once a paradise
of timberland and stream
but it is dying because of the greed
and money lust of a thousand little kings -- archy (1927)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 17:58:05 PDT