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Re: The relentless march of abstraction

• From: Dave Winer <dave@u...>
• To: John Cowan <cowan@m...>
• Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:19:18 -0800

What is "draconian error recovery" and why are you thanking it if it keeps
XML from being easy?

And what's a potted summary?

Questions, questions.

Dave


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@m...>
To: "Dave Winer" <dave@u...>
Cc: "XML-Dev (E-mail)" <xml-dev@l...>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: The relentless march of abstraction


> Dave Winer scripsit:
>
> > Just the first few paragraphs opened my eyes to where the process is
going
> > with XML. I never understood what "infoset" was all about. Now that I
do,
>
> Henry is a fine fellow who has done much good work.  His view of the
> Infoset is not the only view, nor is this potted summary (IMHO) a fair
> representation of even Henry's view, much less the total view.
>
> (I speak as an editor of the Infoset, but not officially for the Core WG.)
>
> > There will be adoption where [XML is] as easy and forgiving as
> > HTML was in 1994.
>
> That will never happen, thanks to draconian error recovery.  Hopefully
> XML will never become such a mess as HTML has become, either.
>
> > The relentless march to abstraction is good for keeping standards wonks
> > employed, but it doesn't do bupkis for interop and level playing fields
and
> > progress towards new Pleasure Buttons For The People. (Which is why HTML
was
> > such a breath of fresh air and so successful.)
>
> Without standards, there is no interoperability, much less a level
> playing field.
>
> --
> John Cowan                                   cowan@c...
> One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
> --Douglas Hofstadter

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