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RE: Improving XML desing?

• To: "Peter Hunsberger" <peter.hunsberger@g...>,<juanrgonzaleza@c...>
• Subject: RE: Improving XML desing?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 10:19:03 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcZ0O+jWUKu2itZ8RUiHfIdIdlUC9AACHw+w
• Thread-topic: Improving XML desing?

I agree with Pete.  As soon as you introduce a new syntax, most of the
reasons for ubiquitous XML adoption evaporate.   I assume you want to
'improve XML' and not nest another product inside it.  Attempts to do
the latter have failed spectacularly.

Perhaps as Pete suggests you can start with a set of improvements and
justifications for them.  Also, as he says, once you open the topics for
discussion here, they go where they will.

And one aside:  if you discuss any potential IP topics (eg, bits for
which you might want to file patents later) on a public list, your right
to patent them in some countries evaporates as well.

XML is open and all that implies.  Full stop.

len


From: Peter Hunsberger [mailto:peter.hunsberger@g...] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 9:12 AM

> >> I am not interested in debate about weakness or strengths of
> >> the CanonML approach here.
> >

Most people here don't have time to try and guess what you want to
talk about. If you post something to a mailing list the entire
contents of the post become fair game for people to discuss.  They are
not going to play by some arbitrary rules you try and impose after the
fact.

> > How can you discuss whether the ideas are suitable for incorporation
> > into XML without discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the
ideas?
> >
> > Michael Kay
> > http://www.saxonica.com/
>
> "[...] for discussing if some of ideas developed from
> the CanonML program [...]"
>
> is not equal to
>
> "[...] debate about weakness or strengths of the CanonML
> approach [...]"
>
> First belong to *ideas/philosophies* about markup languages and data
> storage. Second belong to specific *implementation* of a particular
> language.
>
> For example, a general idea is one can mark either tags or the text.
If
> you choose mark tags (which is ideal for documents) you can implement
> (this general idea) in different ways (TeX, XML, or liminal
> implementations):
>
> \em{XML can be improved}
>
> <em> XML can be improved </em>
>
> [em}XML can be improved{em]
>
> Discussions about my specific usage of double colons or the special
> notation for empty tags or if i use "]" instead of ")", belong to
> criticism to the specific CanonML proposal and I will not discuss it
here.
> If anyone is interested that could be debated in Canonical Science
Today.
>
> However, questions as "XML has model for metadata, but has not model
for
> metametadata, we could implement this similar to,
>
> <tag a={b='metadata'}="metadata">Data<tag>"
>
> would be of interest (and i am interested) here.
>

So in other words you want us to focus on the ideas you have and not
the implementation? If that's the case, you should separate the two
them before presenting them to us.  If you want no discussion of the
details of  the "CanonML" implementation then I'd suggest you start
over with a new post to this list that does not even mention CanonML. 
Instead ask only about the _ideas_ you want to discuss, for example,
whether there is any need for including some kind of 2nd level
metadata representation within XML.

IMO, the answer to this particular question is no.  Metadata can be
applied recursively easily enough and the existing XML mechanisms of
id and idref already serve to allow arbitrary graph structures
relating multiple levels of representation (metadata, metametadata,
metametametadata,....) without the need for some new syntax that
imposes new levels of incompatible parsing complexity.  IE:

    <foo id="123">Data</foo>

    <bar idref="123">metadata</bar>

(or vice-versa if you have some precise syntax in mind that you want
to argue instead of semantics,  this time around...)

--
Peter Hunsberger

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