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

• To: "W. E. Perry" <wperry@f...>, XML DEV <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 11:53:36 -0400
• In-reply-to: <3DA0512A.4C4D5C63@f...>
• References: <r01050300-1015-78CABCAED93211D6BF780003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]><3DA0512A.4C4D5C63@f...>

At 11:05 AM -0400 10/6/02, W. E. Perry wrote:


>Patrick: Do you have only a single root?
>Pierre:  Certainly not.
>
>Patrick: How many roots do you have?
>Pierre:  At least as many roots as I have leaves.
>
>Fascinating premises from which to begin a re-thinking of tree-formed
>entities.
>

Indeed. I've been thinking today about mini-trees as you and John 
Cowan have suggested to me recently, but based on this it suddenly 
hits me that every node in the tree is a root. Going back to data 
structures 201, you can pick up any node, hoist it to the top and let 
its parent become a child as the entire tree shifts around and falls 
in place. Think of washers tied to other washers with strings. The 
physical image is a lot more compelling than the abstract one.

Does this have any use for XML? Is there any point to letting the 
root shift from one node to another while still keeping everything in 
the tree? Does this enable any processing models or solve any 
problems?
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • multi-rooted trees (Re: heritage)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

• References:
  • heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: heritage (was Re: SGML on the Web)
    • From: "W. E. Perry" <wperry@f...>

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