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Re: [Shannon: information ~ uncertainty] Ramifications to XML

• To: Alaric Snell-Pym <alaric@s...>
• Subject: Re: [Shannon: information ~ uncertainty] Ramifications to XML data exchange?
• From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>
• Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:44:32 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <416A8F28.4040501@s...>
• References: <200410111246.i9BCk6L03785@s...> <e3a5cb2c04101106347f9fbd6d@m...> <416A8F28.4040501@s...>
• Reply-to: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 14:48:24 +0100, Alaric Snell-Pym
<alaric@s...> wrote:
> Michael Champion wrote:
> 
> > The point of markup is to add redundancy so as to increase the
> > probability of information surviving noisy channels or the passage of
> > time that tend to degrade  shared assumptions about the inherent
> > structure of messages.
> 
> Hmmm, I'd agree with the latter, but not the former.

Fair enough.  I meant "noisy channels" in a somewhat poetic sense to
include anything that would degrade the shared assumptions that allow
efficient communication to occur.  For example, a future world where
Microsoft Word 2003 binary documents can't be read by widely deployed
software ... the passage of time and the evolution of software would
be the "noisy channel."

But even in literally noisy channels, such as dear old analog modems,
the markup redundancy allowed all sorts of ad-hoc error recovery by
software (e.g. tag soup parsers) .

• References:
  • [Shannon: information ~ uncertainty] Ramifications to XML data exchange?
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
  • Re: [Shannon: information ~ uncertainty] Ramifications to XML data exchange?
    • From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>

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