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Re: syntax, model

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: syntax, model
• From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 13:11:51 -0700
• In-reply-to: <47DA249C-0656-11D8-9BFD-000A95A51C9E@t...>
• References: <47DA249C-0656-11D8-9BFD-000A95A51C9E@t...>

Tim Bray wrote:
> Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> > Most of the documents I create personally have no schema.  The data
> > model is open, defined only by the instance.  The code I write for
> > processing these documents requires no schema.  The code has its own
> > data model, which may or may not resemble the structure of the
> > document.
>
> Me too, for the frequent occurrence of cooking up an ad-hoc vocabulary
> for some particular problem.  For a language that's going to be
> widely-shared, you really ought to write a schema (preferably .rnc),
> for three reasons:
>
> 1. It forces you to write down your design formally and exposes glaring
> gaps
>     in your thinking.  It does for me, anyhow.
> 2. It's useful documentation, there are those who really find schemas
>     easier to read than instances.  Weird but true.
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hm.

Do you really think that's weird, or was that humor?


Taking Atom as an example: if I want to write software
that produces or consumes it, the schema here:

    <URL: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/pie/0.2/pie02.rnc >

is infinitely more valuable than the sample instances here:

    <URL: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/pie/0.2/atom02maximal.xml >
    <URL: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/pie/0.2/atom02minimal.xml >

The sample instances leave _way_ too many questions unanswered.

Now with sufficient intuition and guesswork, you can _probably_
write software that _usually_ works _most_ of the time if all
you have by way of a specification is a collection of sample
inputs.  Personally, I'd rather have a schema (RNC format,
if you please) and skip the guesswork.


--Joe English

  jenglish@f...

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