[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Top-down or bottom-up?
David Megginson wrote: > > Just so, but imagine if we had all waited to start writing DTDs until > ISO approved a master document architecture that would govern all DTDs > in the SGML and XML document space (kudos to HyTime for trying, > though). When I first saw DTDs (ISO 8879 draft), I thought that was what it was: a means for creating master document architectures, that is, a means to express what was legal in a family of documents. It is hard this far into the post-HyTime era, to remember why that was so earth-shattering, but I was elated to finally see a standard that would solve so many of the document process/processing problems of the time when the closest thing we had to it was Digital Standard Runoff. So, there was no waiting; there was a long learning curve in which the warts of it began to appear. Oddly, the warts weren't all in the notorious CS short-comings of the parse model; they were: 1. The Cost of the software to support it 2. The WYSIWYG Wars 3. The difficulty of explaining to the writers of the era why anyone would want this. "This SGML stuff will be the death of us." Then two years later, "This SGML stuff is working." Then ten years later; "This SGML stuff saved our bacon, cost-wise." My point is, I agree, one can't wait. One makes the assessment of the available tools, does a round, looks at the results, and adjusts. From my perspective, HTML has been the GreatSitAround. We repeated a large part of history watching everyone adopt a design we had already discarded. However, that is also part of the cycling. Just like when newbies hit a list, having a much larger community inevitably meant we went back up the learning curve; from blues to jazz to blues to rock to blues again. > This is the point that I (and others) have been making in this > discussion: a top-down approach (start with the master architecture) > can work for something like a new parts-management system for > ACME.com; a bottom-up approach (start with the components, such as > individual specs and DTDs) is pretty much required in an open and > fast-changing system like the Web. I tend to agree, but it isn't changing *that* fast anymore. There are lots of reasons, but mainly, I think the vendor-wash out has finally settled the designs down. There are problems in the details but they are similar to and sometimes the same problems of say, SQL, "% or *", " or '; escape or crash. The argument about "does namespace point to schema" is indicative. Of course it can. One needs no permission to do that. Should that be formal? Heck no, because as you and Tim point out, there can be many things that need pointing to, and of course, we come back to the venerable "what is a resource" debate. Well, what does one need it to be? A registry is a registry whether it is a local or global database, a table of URLs, a table of names, and so on. > As Paul Prescod has pointed out, however, in both cases the process is > really iterative: in a bottom-up approach, it's often useful to stop > and throw together a straw-man architecture to see if what we've done > so far makes sense together; in a top-down approach, it's often useful > to stop and throw together some proof-of-concept components, to see if > there will be any obvious implementation problems. The difference > comes simply from which of the two is formalized. True and there is both sense (good design) and nonsense (politics of who's zoomin' who) in that. Still, I think the markup community overall understands its particular problems and will do well to take a measure of the work to figure out what is needed for the next decade. I thought that was what XML was about and that is why I supported it. The politics of it has always disturbed me, but nevertheless, the work is necessary and is getting good results. I did not think I would ever see graphics coded in markup, but it is happening. Now we do another five years of finding out if syntax unification pays the predicted dividends and what more is needed. The Information Set work, HyTime, Groves, all of that have to be looked at in the critical light of the XML payoff. Is it there? len xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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