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Re: contractual madmess (was Re: The privilege of XML)

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: contractual madmess (was Re: The privilege of XML)
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 18:55:50 -0500
• In-reply-to: <000d01c29f12$a12c54e0$0207a8c0@karl>

karl@w... (Karl Waclawek) writes:
>Unfortunately not.
>Understanding a given piece of data from the context under
>which one comes into contact with it, is extremely difficult.
>You basically need human-like intelligence and a knowledge
>of the world.
>
>Once our computers have that, why would we need XML?

For natural-language processing, certainly.

XML processing, however, is already pretty constrained.  People don't
tend to send markup poetry as invoices (despite the occasional outbreaks
of haiku on this list), and I suspect that perhaps it's time to abandon
the delusion that the meaning of every byte must be predetermined for
there to be any hope of understanding between computers.

It's very strange to me that so many people insist on treating a
technology from the 1970s (60s? 50s?) as if we still have 1975-like
processing capabilities. Let's at least start thinking about the
prospects for something more flexible.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org

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