[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: What is an XML document?
John, An XML document concretely describes abstract notions. Without concrete representations, an abstract notion may exist but may not be useful for practical purposes. Gertrude Stein comes to mind. I paraphrase: "An XML document is an XML document is an XML document." Mike -----Original Message----- From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...] Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 9:04 AM To: Michael Beddow; xml-dev@x... Subject: Re: What is an XML document? Michael Beddow wrote: > er, where's the other voice in this rather interesting dialogue? > > I'm getting only John, not Danny. Sorry, my error. I mistakenly added xml-dev to a posting to a different mailing list. But a precis of the debate is that Dan thinks "XML document" to be a purely abstract notion defined by a formal rule. Whereas I think it just means "document which is in well-formed XML", where "document" is a concrete notion referring to something that has physical existence. This has practical consequences, because I say an XML document doesn't exist unless every external entity referred to from the document entity exists. Dan says that "exist" is not a useful notion for XML documents, any more than it is for integers. -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@r...> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein
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