[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented nature

• To: "'W. E. Perry'" <wperry@f...>, XML DEV <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented nature of DOM
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 08:29:58 -0500

I'll have to contest that.   SGML never made the claim 
that it represented the semantics.  People get confused 
but the standard is not confusing on that point.  SGML 
was developed for a much smaller world of users whose 
exchanges were among parties that did have a great deal 
of apriori knowledge.   Web users by contrast believe 
they are exchanging blindly, but that is also a myth. 
They are as much locked to the semantics of their 
browser as the SGML user was.  Even stylesheets are 
not a new development.   The web is actually not 
different; just a lot more volume and a lot more 
nodes.

HTML is a pretty well agreed on semantic and always 
has been.  It has always had interoperability problems, 
but these are normal for gencoded systems.  We've always 
had to negotiate semantics, and blind exchange is a myth 
even on the web, and probably, particularly on the web. 
The continuing growth of semantically locked applications 
such as Flash attest to that.

The claims that the web have altered the fundamentals 
of markup are without basis, hubristic, and somewhat 
at the root of the restless innovation that seems to 
churn applications but make no real progress.

len

From: W. E. Perry [mailto:wperry@f...]

Validation, whether by DTD, schema, or otherwise, is grounded in the
expectation that an XML-consuming application adheres to a contract to process
only input which conforms to a pre-agreed schematic. This is a legacy SGML
notion that has never successfully translated to the very different
environment 'on the Web'.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented n
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

• Prev by Date: XML indexing/search engine
• Next by Date: Re: Best Practice = Vanilla XML? (was A multi-stepapproach on defining object-orientednatureof DOM)
• Previous by thread: RE: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented nature of DOM
• Next by thread: Re: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented n
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread