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RE: more grist

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: "Vegt, Jan" <Jan.Vegt@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 09:08:28 -0600

Steve had to go into these woods when there weren't 
trails.  That was true for a lot of the Hytimers.  
Most people since have had the advantage of the 
trail they hacked.  But it was a trail ,not a highway, and a hard 
one to hike.   Remember, many many weren't 
the highly trained CS grads that infest markup 
today.  They were lawyers, tech writers, musicians, 
teachers, lieutenant commanders, and the occasional 
really brilliant CS grad like Neill Kipp trying to 
hold it together.   Steve did an amazing job working 
with Charles Goldfarb and Yuri Rubinsky trying to 
keep this going in the very lean days when the 
only thing SGML was taken seriously for was as input 
to a typesetter.  Ten years ago, hypertext was for 
AI gurus and wackos and that perception was deliberately 
used to keep other initiatives alive or in front. 
The pain quotient was high but the goal was worth it. 
Information free of the hardware, lasting, right, 
reusable, available to anyone with a connection.

We are past all that now down to the CS issues 
like data models.  Some people are hitting the wall 
they hit then dead on, that extensibility and interoperation 
are two poles with an analogical gulf that is quite 
wide.  There is no free lunch.  There are tools, 
techniques, and clever hacks to pull all this together, 
but at the end of the day, the web is a noisy 
communication channel and to preserve freedom 
of choice (the means to evolve), has to be that. 
Chaos is the engine of evolution.   What that 
means is that this job is never done.  It goes 
through phases, it gets passed on to the new 
guy like the Maytag repairman, but it is always 
a job looking for skilled workers.

Steve was, is, and always will be a pioneer in our 
field.  He bought his own machete to carve the 
trail.  He took a lot of risks, paid high dues, 
and is still out there hacking.  He deserves our 
respect.  From what I know of him, the best way 
to give him that is to pick up a tool and keep 
the trail clear for those that follow.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Vegt, Jan [mailto:Jan.Vegt@s...]
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 4:31 AM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len); xml-dev@l...
Subject: RE: more grist


Len,

Good stuff. I admit I was never able follow 
Steve Newcomb on HyTime. I just found Robin's
excellent compilation on "the power of groves"
www.oasis-open.org/cover/groves20000210.html 

Some interesting prior art here it seems ...


Jan

---------------------------------------

>So, well-formed anybody?  InfoSets next?  Sheesh. 
>Groves and grove plans just like the HyTime guys 
>said it would be.  I don't think that avoidable 
>unless someone wants to redo the base infoSet 
>to accomodate a limited set of vocabularies, 
>but I think the slope is becoming ice quickly. 

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