[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Xml is _not_ selfdescribing
At 02:52 PM 1/15/2002 +0100, Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI wrote: >Hello all > >I think that it is fair to conclude now, that XML is _not_ any more >selfdescribing than e.g. CSV files. > >Sometimes I see that we move very close to becoming guilty of "Xtreme >Marketing Language (XML)". Actually, Jon Bosak has always been careful to say that XML does not define the meaning of the data. In the early days, he used to show an audience a DTD written in Japanese and point out that the meaning of the structures it described really aren't obvious to those who do not speak Japanese. There are too many people in the XML world who read Japanese, so Ugaritic might be a better choice. The fact that meaningful names can be used in DTDs and Schemas means that human beings often do have an idea what a DTD describes, but that means that natural language names convey meaning, not that XML conveys meaning. Human beins have a burning need to ascribe meaning to just about anything, which is why we are able to read tea leaves, play slot machines, and trade commodities. An exercise for the reader: if an RDF Schema is written in Ugaritic, is it any more "meaningful" than an XML Schema that describes the same data? Please state the definition of "meaning" you are using, and how you determine if this kind of meaning is present.... Jonathan
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