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RE: Can XML Schemas do this?

• To: "Paul Prescod" <paul@p...>,"Eric van der Vlist" <vdv@d...>
• Subject: RE: Can XML Schemas do this?
• From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>
• Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 11:25:21 -0800
• Cc: "Jeff Lowery" <Jeff.Lowery@c...>,"Bryce K. Nielsen" <bryce@s...>,"xml-dev" <xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcLBgA6H6LXvatloT4S7qdjxUv4CsAAAdBlQ
• Thread-topic: Can XML Schemas do this?

> > <extract title="Be liberal on the relative order between children
> > elements"/>
> 
> I disagree.

> "bother" the user with the responsibility of choosing an order. From
the
> user's point of view, the order matters unless they are told
otherwise.

That's an interesting point.  I think the "user perspective" argument
becomes more difficult to back up when you have element content that
involves lots of optional children -- in those cases the user often
wants to be able to insert whichever elements matter without necessarily
worrying which order they come in.  Imagine for example if command-line
apps were written to expect a certain order to command-line arguments.
It would certainly save people from having to write getopts.c, but would
actually be an *impediment* to usability and user expectations.

There are some scenarios where order naturally matters, and others where
the user *assumes* it will matter, but I think there are plenty of other
cases where users would be unpleasantly surprised by finding that order
matters.

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