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RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures

• To: "'mayfair@t...'" <mayfair@t...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 15:58:41 -0500
• Cc: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>, Henrik Martensson <henrik.martensson@b...>

Yep.  If a system lets a repair technician skip 
a warning or a writer inserts a caution instead 
of a warning, the repair technician can die. 

Then their family or company sues the company that 
wrote the manual.

If anyone says 'this is not what XML is to be 
used for', they missed most of the last decade 
of markup work, and they should be sent to 
work on paper products in Postscript. ;-)

That's not to say that all editors have to 
support the rigors of technical writing. 
But some do.  That is likely why Arbortext 
is still in business while SoftQuad isn't. 
That is likely why the US Marines still 
require the use of IADS fifteen years 
after it was created.  It's actually 
stunning how well that application has 
withstood the pressures to become an 
HTML browser.  Maybe starting with 
SGML was the right thing to do after all.

len


From: Ari Nordstrom [mailto:mayfair@t...]

If the writers are free to invent 
new markup whenever they feel that the current (allowed) markup doesn't
cover 
what they are describing you're soon facing a situation where different 
markup is used to describe semantically identical situations. This costs 
money. Lots of money. Yes, it's possible to create a system that will 
"gracefully" alert something or someone of the new markup, and it's possible

to even treat it reasonably well (in other words, publish the thing without 
breaking anything too badly) but it will cost money.

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