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

Re: "vocabulary constraints" and other constraints

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• To: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@a...>
• Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:43:43 -0500

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
> One of the great themes of computer science over the last sixty years
> has been the long-running campaign to move more and more things out of
> the "must be checked by eyeball" / semantics area, and into the "can
> readily be checked by machine" / syntax area.

I used to think that, and injured myself severely writing XML tools in Java.

What was I thinking?  Checking code by machine isn't much more useful 
than checking documents by machine.  I'm a lot happier in Ruby, and 
hopefully will get around to writing some XML tools here.

The flexibility gives me vastly more power than the structure ever did, 
even though the cost structure is different.  (Not higher, different.)

Count me in on the opposite side of that nonsensical "campaign," thanks!

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/