[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: G. Orwell (was: xml taxonomy)

• To: winchel@m..., clbullar@i..., rjm@z..., xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: G. Orwell (was: xml taxonomy)
• From: Laurent.SABARTHEZ@c...
• Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:28:50 +0200
• Cc: Neil.Payne@j..., Karen.Cannata@j..., TJSmith@I..., gpoindexter@b..., XMLWG@l...

Winchel,

Sorry to have to insist. I'll be picky on a detail first.

A protocol is in effect a procedure, something close to a procedure in a
programming language. Now, a procedure (resp. protocol) is neither data
(resp. message) nor a computation (resp. transfer). I'm a bit amazed to have
to remind such basic things to a person who is presumably familiar with such
fundamental topics.

Now the main issue, by means of an example.

<snip>
atomic document = electronic document
</snip>

Since there are infinitely many "atomic" documents that are not electronic,
and since there are infinitely many electronic documents that are not
"atomic" (incidentally, structural markup is just about being able to break
a document into its elements), I guess that you're using here and elsewhere
the equality operator as sort of shorthand for "is a subtype of" or
something like that.

I doubt you could build anything you could share with other people, if (a)
you're using words that are commonly used, regardless of their generally
accepted meaning (e.g. academia, industry); (b) you're stating relationships
with denotations that are commonly used, regardless of their generally
accepted semantics.

<rant scope="general" severity="high" resilience="strong">

The XML community already gets enough trouble from marketing hype, that
every now and then is pushing plain old words with either new meanings or
just no meaning at all (e.g. "integration", which is to be "seamless", at
least as of August 27, 2003, or "prototyping", that used to be "rapid" --
ever heard about "slow prototyping"? -- and is now "extreme" -- oops, I
meant "agile", sorry, I'm definitely an old fart).

Please don't add your own "granum salis" to the current state of confusion.

We all need a common, robust terminology. There are well-known rules to
build and extend it. Clarity, consistency and logic are fundamental
ingredients. Common sense may help, too.
</rant>

Regards.

--
Laurent Sabarthez

• Prev by Date: RE: XML and the Relational Model (was Re: A standard approach to glueing together ...)
• Next by Date: RE: XML CMM and ISO9000 compliance? - was A standard approach to glueing together reusableXML fragments in prose?
• Previous by thread: RE: XML and the Relational Model (was Re: A standard approach to glueing together ...)
• Next by thread: RE: XML and the Relational Model [long]
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread