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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Markup perspective not code (was RE: Re: URIs, c
 Aaron Skonnard wrote: > It would have been more accurate to say "markup users are simply using > pre-defined vocabularies *implemented* by programmers." In some limited circumstances, this is an OK way to begin mastering the skills of markup within a given domain of expertise. This technique, however, is never more than training wheels. Markup is a skill in its own right, like research or expository writing, required, or at least very handy indeed in the expert practice of an increasing number of domains. Markup is a very different skill from programming. Like basic programming, basic markup can be taught on simple principles, but like skilled programmers skilled markup practitioners have refined and mastered techniques through repeatedly confronting problems which yield to an understanding of deep patterns. Tim Bray eagerly addressed a question on this list yesterday because it appealed to him as a break from the usual exegesis practiced here. Questions of the tone, or aesthetics, of this list aside, markup is in fact a branch of exegetical practice, which is where it differs fundamentally from programming. At the most mundane level, programming is prescriptive where markup is descriptive. More generally, programming is ultimately algorithmic where markup is taxonomic. The differences in mindset are daily on display on this list, of course. Nevertheless (with all my bias showing) it seems to me that xml-dev is, and should be, finally about the development of skilled XML--that is, markup--and much less about the ancillary business of implementing appropriate algorithms for processing the wonderful subtleties which the markup grows to describe. Not that there is not a place (and a need!) for both here. But there are many, many other places for programmers to whet their craft, and few if any others where the expert practice of markup is understood as a profound skill. Respectfully, Walter Perry 
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