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Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)

• To: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Subject: Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
• From: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>
• Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 18:17:54 +0100
• Cc: pdurusau@e..., michael.h.kay@n..., "'W. E. Perry'" <wperry@f...>, 'XML DEV' <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <3DA30E05.9010804@t...>
• Organization: Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd
• References: <000401c26ece$ff085650$6401a8c0@pcukmka><3DA2EBF8.40603@t...> <3DA2F984.7040007@e...><3DA30E05.9010804@t...>
• Reply-to: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>

Hi Tim,

> As for the decision, it was all over in about 45 seconds on one
> teleconference, I remember it clearly. Fairly early on in the XML
> design process. Someone (maybe me? I forget) said "er, should we do
> an API as well?" and James Clark said "isn't the idea that there's
> going to be one API that's going to work for all the different
> things you want to do kind of silly?" and everyone said "oh, right"
> and that was that.

But there's a big difference between a data model and an API onto a
data model. The Infoset, for example, isn't an API; you could imagine
many APIs onto the Infoset, which might reveal different parts of the
structure in different ways.

I guess that when I've been talking about a "data model" in this
thread, I've been talking about the Infoset-level data model rather
than the API-level data model. I fully agree that trying to define an
API-level data model would be a complete nightmare, even when you're
in a committee of 3. But agreeing on an Infoset-level data model is
"only" about as burdensome as agreeing on a syntax, at least if my
experience with LMNL is anything to go by.

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>

• References:
  • RE: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
  • Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@e...>
  • Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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