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One might start with some research into how compound document architecture's have worked or not worked in the past. A quick Google search returns for example: Cronk, Ronald D. "Unlocking Data's Content" Byte 18(10) (September 1993):111-120. The data in a document is often richer and more informational than a simple text or numerical figures. Electronic documents can be made to work for an organization in ways paper documents never could. Various applications running on different platforms can be linked to run as one document. Markup languages are one way to make the data computer readable across different applications. SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) is the most widely used tagging language. One drawback of SGML is that there is no universal standard for the specific processing rules used for encoding and decoding documents, another is that SGML itself only works on text. Another way to solve the problem of document interchange is to link multiple applications in a single document. This method is known as compound document architecture (CDA). The two leading CDAs are Open Document Architecture and DEC's Compound Document Architecture. An attractive element of CDAs are that they are not limited to text, but also allow for the interchange of images and graphics. - DBR" There are lots more. 1. Are you willing to agree that XML only works on text? 2. Is a namespace-compound document and a CDA roughly the same beastie? Last time around, people weren't seriously considering wrapping more than images and graphics for exchange. That being the solved problem, what problem is the namespace-compound trying to solve not already solved (beyond name disambiguation? 3. At the end of this, will you have reinvented PDF? len -----Original Message----- From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@t...] I'm probably -1 on the whole thing, because I don't think we have enough experience yet to know what information is going to be useful in picking apart and using namespace- compound documents.
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