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Re: Architectural Forms (was Re: XHTML 2.0 and the

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Architectural Forms (was Re: XHTML 2.0 and the death)
• From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
• Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 06:47:06 +0000
• In-reply-to: <E17jD4p-00021z-00@m...>
• References: <aray@n...> of "Mon, 26 Aug 2002 03:06:05 -0000." <uo5jmucbernvajhtt55s11iloj3jb4vl80@4...> <E17jD4p-00021z-00@m...>

Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...> wrote:

| > Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...> wrote:
| > | [Arjun Ray:]

|> [...] Frederic Bastiat's classic essay:
|> 
|>  http://www.freedomsnest.com/bastiat.html
|> 
|> especially the parable of the broken window.  Mindspace is finite.
| 
| Yes.  I read this after it was cited in The Economist.
| 
| And?...

Well, wasn't the boy who broke the window a social benefactor, for all the
remunerative activity he caused to happen?  

What is seen: Namespaces.  What is not seen: attribute-based processing.

The mindspace comment was a reference to the unseen displacement that
modern economists call "opportunity cost", as pointed out also by Steven
Newcomb:

 http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/199804/msg00053.html
 http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200002/msg00633.html
 
| I was clearly talking about the developers on this list. 

In 1997-98 would you have been willing to consider anything the W3C had
issued an emphatic no-no on?  Arguing "economics" four years later is just
status-quoism.  We are all loth to write off investments as bad.  Tell me
about it.

| I don't think you can write the lot of us off as political puppets, or 
| things such as SAX, RDDL and AFNG would never have emerged.

And which of these depends in any essential way on making namespaces
"work"?  (RDDL is actually a way *to* make namespaces work, using an Xlink
of the "simple" type", so there is a delicious petitio principii here.)

The fact of the matter is that the list *is* inventive.  Without it,
namespaces had no chance whatsoever, papal bulls from 50000 ft about
"axioms of architecture" or whatever notwithstanding.  By the same token,
over long stretches the list has been a complete waste of time (for me, at
least.)
 
| It so happens that I've been thinking on hacking on AFs because I see a 
| *political* problem of the HTML and XLink WGs' making that causes the sort 
| of itch I'm willing to scratch for no expected remuneration.

Go for it, then!

| The peevishness of my message is that you seemed to imply that this 
| particular developer list should be jumping to attention to solve the 
| problems you think are big ones.

All along I've been saying that the real problems with namespaces are due
to the fact that they exist from political legerdemain, not any intrinsic
technical merit.  The trouble is that technicians would lief believe that
no politics were ever involved at all.

That's how bad investments are still made to look good.

| Then again, based on your indirect comment on using XPath in AFs, I doubt 
| you'd like anything I come up with.  Oh well.

If token lists didn't need an extension function, AF techniques would be
relatively trivial in XSLT.  We all know this.  But cannons are not always
needed when peashooters would suffice (mainly because AFs are *not* about
transformations.)  Use XPath, and you will have reinvented most of XSLT.

• References:
  • Re: Architectural Forms (was Re: XHTML 2.0 and the death)
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
  • Re: Architectural Forms (was Re: XHTML 2.0 and the death)
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>

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