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Re: Ted Nelson's "XML is Evil"

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Ted Nelson's "XML is Evil"
• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:52:42 -0400

> I agree - particularly for deep analysis of data with multiple
> overlapping hierarchies. Much of what I have seen here involves 
> biblical
> texts or linguistic data.

Those are the typical examples, because they're driven by linguistic 
structures, but examples abound... like for example being able to 
concurrently treat an address as a string, or just extract zip codes, 
or to be able to automagically generate markup for names, sentences, 
etc. and to synthesize structures around them to aide in processing. 
The point is to really step outside the boundaries of inline markup as 
we typically think about it, and to think of the *text* in the context 
of markup, both explicit and implicit.

XML implies a certain processing model... one which many people (IMHO 
wrongly) think involves being "correctly typed", which is where the 
difference lies. One model espouses uniformity, commonality, and 
"correctness", and the other the ability for the reader to interpret a 
document as they see fit, and to modify their view, *without* altering 
the original text.

Having experimented quite a bit, I've come to be sympathetic with Ted 
Nelson's view. Even though Xanadu never saw the light of day, many of 
the ideas are perfectly valid, and technologically, a closed system 
like that is quite "doable".

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