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Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es

• Subject: Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
• From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@h...>
• Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 12:23:38 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EEEACD72@h...> <E18OL0Q-0001mc-00@c...> <f0fel8gpo68.fsf@p...> <3DFF5BD9.9010603@t...> <f0f8yyopneu.fsf@p...> <003101c2a63d$e6539b50$4b183044@tbp1> <f0flm2no1o4.fsf@p...> <3E009A4C.6030103@t...>
• Reply-to: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@h...>

> On the contrary.  View Source is essential.  Read DTD is nice-to-have.
> And for something reasonably complex, like for example DocBook or HTML,
> in my experience it's *easier* to learn by View Source.  Anyhow, I'd
> rather have a program read the DTD for me and tell me where I got the
> instance wrong.  Reading moderately-complex DTDs with lots of parameter
> entities can be immensely difficult. -Tim

Had DTDs been better documented and more readable they'd have doubtless gotten
more use.  The same could be said of XML schema work.

Users tend to take the path of least resistance.  Often cobbling up HTML that
gets something working in a browser is usually where they stop.

I find the whole readability argument to be a bit of a red herring.  It's ALL
unreadable unless you know what's going on.  Sometimes, as Tim points out, it
can be immensely difficult to understand.  Combine that with the situation that
has browers and other tools not able to /properly/ handle or utilize the
extra-HTML data and you've got the situation we have today.  It seems like an
awful lot of complaining about the readability of things should be better placed
on the crappy condition of the tools and documentation.

-Bill Kearney

• References:
  • RE: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Features
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Features
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Featur es
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)
  • Re: Whitepapers and ScreenShots of Office 11 XML Features
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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