[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: <?XDEV?> and BEHAVIOR: a meta-proposal and a proposal
I want to respond to the "meta-proposal" a bit, because I disagree with some of the axioms, and the proposed procedures. I don't have time or energy right now to respond to the specific proposal, though I may well do so later (based on my own, somewhat divergent, axioms). At 6:45 PM -0000 11/15/97, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: ><LIST> > <AXIOM>In any of these cases there is no general solution acceptable to >everyone > </AXIOM> > <AXIOM> If no attempt is made to address these problems we shall either >end up with a Babel of incompatible solutions, or wait feebly for some >powerful autonomous entities to dictate a limited set of actions. > </AXIOM> Not necessarily. In fact, for many problems the correct response is to ensure that the stylesheet ans processing specification langauges can _implement_ each of the specific solutions desired, _without_ forcing the specific solutions on whihc divergence of opinion may exist. More on this with the "PI" axioms. > <AXIOM> We have to be careful to avoid the 'only processable with >software X' syndrome</AXIOM> Yes. The way to do this is to _avoid_ PIs as much as possible. PIs that are required to interpret a document correctly are _inherently_ anti-portability, since the rule for PIs is that _any application_ should be free to ignore them without changin the meaning of the document. The use of SGML's PI syntax in XML is a not a good model for the use of PIs in general, since they are being used in XML as a syntactic "escape hatch" for compatibility with SGML. It would not be necessary (or desirable) if XML were not (to some very small extent) changing SGML facilitied (as with specifying the character encoding of entitites in PIs, rather than an SGML declaration). If XML had been able to add declarations to SGML, that would have been done instead of using the PI syntax. > <AXIOM> There is a critical mass of readers of this list who feel the >need to address the problem. </AXIOM> Without a problem statement I'm not sure how to judge this, but it may well be true. > <AXIOM> Anyone can use any PIs they like in their documents for whatever >purposes they like without breaking the spirit of XML. </AXIOM> This is assuredly incorrect. PIs are intended for use in the case where a practical _use_ of a document with _particular software_ requires additional information that _should not_ have been indicated ina structural description of the content. A paradigmatic example is the occasional need to insert a page or column break in order to get acceptable formatting in a particular processing situation (including: software, stylesheet, output device). This is not information that _should_ be encoded in the abstract representation of a document, but _may be essential_ for "getting the thing to print right". > <AXIOM> That processing software need not (and so far won't) take any >notice of these (or perhaps any) PIs > </AXIOM> This is certainly essential. If you are saying something about you document that you can imagine being useful to some software that you aren't using right now -- then it should probably be in the markup. PIs are for things that can be ignored without changing the interpretation of a document. > <AXIOM> If a few people find a way of doing something that works for >them, and isn't against the spirit of the XML specs, then flaming their >ideas is pointless.</AXIOM> Even this is not necessarily true -- attacking the dissemination of false or bad ideas is _never_ pointless, in that dissemination of bad information (even if it serves a local porpose adequately well) can seriously mislead people. For instance the use of styles in word-processing programs is usually a very good idea. The fact that in some instances direct formatting may work out, or even work better, should not stop people from quarreling with public assertions about the utility of stylesheets based on those situations. To the extent that these axioms seem to be intended to rule out disagreement of the merits of future proposals, I must take immediate and strong exception to them. It's not possible for a responsible discussant who disagrees with a public proposal of working practice to remain silent on the topic. "Flaming" is usually not responsible discussion, but principled disagreements should be expressed so that the issues are clear to all. ></LIST> ><NOTE>The proposal I really want to address is, like Month Python's joke, >so potentially dangerous that I dare not reveal it yet. The proposal here >is also important to me - perhaps to others - and I hope servers as a >useful example. It is NOT in a finalised form, but as can be seen from the >meta-proposal, there is a method for referring to the a 'pseudo-final' form >that is, at least, usable. ></NOTE> This makes me nervous ><META-PROPOSAL> >That a PI of the form <?XDEV?> is 'reserved' by members of this list for >PI-based proposals on this list. [We cannot use XML-DEV as 'XML' is rightly >reserved.] We can certainly do this -- but as I said above, there are good reasons to oppose the use of PIs for _any_ use that affects the semantics of documents. For example, even the proposed namespace PI would be vulnerable on this account, except for the facts that: 1. It's intended for use in _experiment_ with a proposed _extension_ of XML. (In other words, the PI, should it be generally accepted for use with all interested XML applications, would become part of XML). 2. The prefix can be processed (and thus, the semantic information accessed) _without_ software having to be aware of the namespace PI. In other words, the PI can be treated as equivalent to a comment describing the proposed intent of the tags that share a prefix. (In other words, you can ignore the namespace PI, and still detect the semantic distinctions in the document) > >That anyone can post a proposal to this list for the use of this PI. Anyone can post anything anywhere. >That any author can include an instance of such a proposed PI in their >document. Again, any author can put anything they want anywhere, good idea or not. >That any writer of application software can write software to process such >a PI. Again, how could anyone stop them? >That both of these should refer to an appropriate URL on this list's >archive discussing outlining the use of this PI. Certainly not a bad idea.. >That if someone doesn't approve of a proposal they ignore it rather than >flaming it. The fittest ideas will survive. In the long run this may (or for a number of reasons may not) be true. However, bad ideas that are initially plausible but unworkable in the long term (e.g., from a related, but different doamin, the creation and management of large structured information cropora in raw HTML) would get an artificial (and community-harmful) boost if an effective social convention forbidding disagreement were in effect. I agree that polite, reasoned disagreement is better than flaming (impolite, ad-hominem disagreement) but in the intellectual world the unfit perish faster under the lash of criticism. ></META-PROPOSAL> _________________________________________ David Durand dgd@c... \ david@d... Boston University Computer Science \ Sr. Analyst http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/ \ Dynamic Diagrams --------------------------------------------\ http://www.dynamicDiagrams.com/ MAPA: mapping for the WWW \__________________________ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... 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