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RE: Ted Nelson's "XML is Evil"

• To: 'Jonathan Robie' <jonathan.robie@d...>, "Hunsberger, Peter" <Peter.Hunsberger@S...>
• Subject: RE: Ted Nelson's "XML is Evil"
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:26:34 -0500
• Cc: Michael Kay <michael.h.kay@n...>, Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>, xml-dev@l...

From: Jonathan Robie [mailto:jonathan.robie@d...]

Hunsberger, Peter wrote:

>> Archive isn't an isolated capability.  Archive implies capability for
>> usage.  Usage implies a mix of concerns. Does placing a inscribed stone
>> tablet in a air tight iron box meet the requirements of archive if no
>> one knows how to interpret the inscriptions on the stone tablet at any
>> point in time?

>Well, it worked great for the Rosetta Stone. Give people a bunch of 
>labels, and they can often figure it out - even in languages they don't 
>know, given enough time.

And three parallel versions of the content for which you know the
translation 
of two.  It wasn't an archive; it was a monument.   It took a long time 
to figure it out and it was one guy, not several who finally did it. 
The problems are do you have enough time, do you have parallel references, 
and do you have the right guy (say obsessive) working on it.  Archives 
aren't trusted to luck and obsession.

>I think the topic at hand is inline markup. How could omitting the 
>markup make it easier to understand the meaning and structure of the 
>contents of a file?

Only if 

o  the markup is more obscure than the direct layout and content.
o  the markup is only one of several possible each of which expresses 
   a different intent
o  there is no legal or practicable means to markup the contents inline

len

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