[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Parser compliance

• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• To: xml-dev@i...
• Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 10:42:20 -0600

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> > It's a bit disingenuous to criticise what was far and away the best
> > solution at the time. It was no more or less a money-grab than the
> > current market.
> 
> DTDs should have been just part of the solution, not *the* solution.

But why did these projects exist?

Let's say the US military wants to exchange parts information with the
Canadian government. This is a horrendous problem technically,
politically and economically. It would be a hundred million dollar
project (if it were ever completed) and the output would be not a single
line of software but rather an extremely large DTD or set of DTDs and a
very large design document. It seems massively unfair to act as if the
act of producing this specification is not "real work" because it is not
coding. 

A separate issue is which is more important: the document or the machine
readable DTD. Tim claims that the DTD is of minor importance. I would
argue even with that but it is still different than saying that the
effort that produced the DTD was itself a waste or a sham.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
Bart: Dad, do I really have to brush my teeth?
Homer: No, but at least wash your mouth out with soda.

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 unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
unsubscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• References:
  • Re: Parser compliance
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: Parser compliance
    • From: David Megginson <david@m...>
  • Re: Parser compliance
    • From: Marcus Carr <mrc@a...>
  • Re: Parser compliance
    • From: David Megginson <david@m...>

• Prev by Date: Re: How CAN one facilitate re-use of XML components?
• Next by Date: RE: History
• Previous by thread: Re: Parser compliance
• Next by thread: RE: Parser compliance
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread