[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Seeking a Dao of Groves
The aggregate of W3C standards are a reinvention of HyTime in the sense that they set out to standardize the same scope of concepts. If it looks like strip mining, in a sense it is, but that is Ok because as many of us know, many of the same people are involved. There is no ISO vs W3C in this area. There are different authorities, but the same minions. XML is still SGML On The Web and while it may be fun or profitable to ignore that fact, it is still just ignorance. We came here to work together. Some are asking about HyTime, so let's get into that. It is worth doing. It might be good to understand some history. *ACK NO! NOT THAT!* Why? Politics and personalities are what they are, power, tactics all of that, but they get us no closer to understanding HyTime. It is true that I was around a bit after hyTime emerged, and worked with its inventors. It is true that by the time we got to the Vancouver conference, and after some experience, I no longer had the foggiest idea what Eliot and Steven were saying in their presentations. Those experiences made me a believer in HTML in the same way IADS made me a believer in fixed tags for certain constructs in hypertext systems: easy to learn, solves the problems at hand, gets the income stream started to feed the staff. IOW, I may not be the brightest bulb, but I am qualified in the application of hypertext systems and if Mikey can't understand it, something is amiss. A standard the user cannot apply is not a useful standard (see David, we can all be taut..). HyTime is brilliant, but brilliance blinds as well as illuminates. Sometimes the best position for a light is behind, above and slightly to the left. So, a statement for finding the position: standards derail, in my experience, when the problem to be solved by them is not (adequately understood | clearly stated | closed). I am asking Dr. Newcomb, the only one besides Dr. Goldfarb on this list who was there at the beginning to verify or refute the following, and fill in the rationale. I would be delighted if Dr Goldfarb would help. 1. True or False: hyTime started (little H deliberate as a music standard. The problem(s) to be solved were synchronization and an application language for a musical notation. What requirements of music made the hyTime designers move into a larger scope of standardization (Intergrated Open Hypermedia: Bibliographic Model). 2. True of False: There originally WAS a hyTime DTD. Why was it abandoned? 3. When at its most widely studied, HyTime included an exhaustive set of linking and location models. At this point, the synchronization facility was expressed using these. Why did linking and location become the dominant feature of HyTime? 4. True or False: Groves are a concept borrowed from DSSSL, a style language, itself, originally that was altered to include Semantics. What requirement in a linking and location standard resulted in a unification with the DSSSL groves concept? If we can understand the decisions made during the decade long design of ISO 10744, we can better understand the concepts because we will understand the problems it tries to solve before we try to understand how it solves them. It took ten years to make HyTime obscure. The W3C has beaten that speed record with the XML specs. The XML Schema is a mess. Put it with all the others and Dr. Newcomb is justified in saying this is a disaster. So, yes, time for some simplifications. Perhaps understanding the way another standard tried to solve the same problems is a clarifying experience. BTW: Tao. It means, "the way". In that system, there are many ways; they lead to the same place. Aware intelligence can decide to go there together.. or not. It is more important to understand that than it is to understand HyTime because the effect of community is much stronger than the effect of monopoly or consortium. Authority is choice, and whether as in the Tao, this is opposites, or as in Tao, extremes of the same continuum, intelligence still must choose for community. 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/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 Unsubscribe by posting to majordom@i... the message unsubscribe xml-dev (or) unsubscribe xml-dev your-subscribed-email@your-subscribed-address Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS.
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