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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XSet, an XML Property Set, was: re: Why the Infoset?
 Not aimed at you, Jonathan or anyone in particular. The quote is a phrase I've seen repeated so many times in so many media over the last fifteen or so years of working with markup, it has almost become the national battlecry of the entitled generation. If we really need something beyond the infoset for a full description, and the authoritative references for the parent standard uses the grove property set techniques, why should we adopt a different means for a proper subset of the parent standard to define its properties? Right now, because namespaces imply and should normatively require the infoset but the XML parent doesn't, we have a bizarre record of authority and a gaping hole for mischief. 1. "I don't understand groves." Asserted many times and may be the fault of the authors. On the other hand, explained many times on the list and apparently not that difficult to grasp. Per Eliot Kimber's examples presented in threads here, not that hard to apply either. I've asked for and gotten that explanation from Eliot and Prescod and frankly, it looks easy to me once one gets past the initial concept of node/property sets and the awful names they chose for the abstractions. 2. "Groves and property sets are overbuilt." Possibly but I don't have a good feel for this. It seems to me the same thing said about SGML lead to HTML and XML. Half a decade later some slowly realize that HTML was too underbuilt and XML is slowly reacquiring most of the concepts of SGML. My intuition is that simple requirements everyone can understand tend to be less robust than the problems a few can. It sounds elitist but the reality is one of experience over expectation. 3. "We can do a better job now." Can we? Will we? Or will it be another long tedious committee experience that in the long run comes down to the requirements and meanwhile, John Cowan's work becomes both de rigeur and de facto by dint of being done and meeting a subset of the requirements. If the grove definitions can be made workable, decide on that first. Get Newcomb, Kimber, Adler, Clark, Goldfarb and the other usual suspects to offer an opinion. Solicit as many of these as possible before setting a course of action. Again, the rush to code is usually a mistake even if the prototypes work. First, why does Simon consider these a red herring when there is a body of experience that after years of wrestling with the problems of complete and rigorous definitions of markup languages that suggests the opposite conclusion? Second, if it is just the politics and reputations of the W3C versus ISO, tell them both to screw off and get what you need done. Tell me we are past the insanity of that period of hero worship and mindless obedience to MIT or San Jose. Third, if the groves really are too hard, then do with them what was done with XML, make that subset a high priority and get the folks who wrote the originals to help you do it. John Cowan and others sweated blood for the InfoSet and a lot of the rest of us depend on it. Let's be sure it isn't sufficient. If it isn't, explore alternatives with the greatest care and don't reinvent something that might work just because the description is obscure or the *right important people* didn't author it. If that is all the problem is, demand and get a clearer description. I think these already exist (see Prescod, Kimber, et al). Then put everybody's names on it and announce to the world a consensus from the foremost experts in the world willing to work on it. It is the adult thing to do. Len Bullard http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@m...] From this last quote (who are you quoting here? not me.) I take it to mean that you are implying that others have argued against groves and property sets because "This is too hard"? The bottom line issue is not whether groves are too hard, but that, for example, Simon sees a discussion of "grove plans and property sets" a "red herring" in the context of a full fidelity XML information model and a mechanism to subset such into, e.g. Common XML. Whose fault is this? are groves really a red herring? In which case we really really need a way to specify a full fidelity XML model and subsets. Are 99.99% of people just unable to understand? (is this what you are implying by the above?) If this is the case I fault the description, not the people. 
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