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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Please stop writing specifications that cannot beparsed/pr
 Actors always have to be reminded when playing Hamlet that there is at least one person in the audience who doesn't know the plot. I think you are far too complacent about what constitutes universal knowledge. It might be true that everyone in the English-speaking world over a certain age knows who Marilyn Monroe was, but how many teenagers in China know? Contrariwise, I've come across Americans who assume that it is universal knowledge how many cents make a dime, or what age a child is when they reach 5th grade, and such assumptions just show how little they know of the world. Michael Kay > On 28 May 2023, at 03:38, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > Hi all, > > On Sat, 27 May 2023 08:34:38 -0400 > B Tommie Usdin <btusdin@mulberrytech.com> wrote: > >>> On May 27, 2023, at 12:26 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: >>> >>> I have a hypothesis that such wilfully-ignorant, non-geeky, non-hackery, >>> people are becoming less influential, less attractive, and rarer ... >> >> I am of a different opinion. >> >> There are far too many knowable things for anyone to have deep knowledge of >> all of them. Some people choose to know a little about many things >> (generalists), some people choose to know a lot about a few things >> (specialists). Generalists seem to have an easier time in life than >> specialists. Specialists seem to be the people who get important things done. >> Slighting specialists because they are not generalists (or specialists in >> some topic other than their specialty) is unhelpful; insisting that they make >> the time and devote the energy to learn skills outside their area of >> expertise is an effort to dilute their genius, and likely to fail. >> > > I discussed generalism vs. specialism in "sherlock holmes about Awk": > https://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1991.html . noone can or should be a 100% > specialist unless you expect people to forget that 1+1=2, or that there are 12 > months in a year. "One does not simply not Know who Marilyn > Monroe is" [ > https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/image-macros/indiv-nodes/not_know_marilyn_monroe.xhtml > ]: > > [[ > > Some have not heard of Sarah Bernhardt, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Ava > Gardner, or whoever, but everyone has heard of Monroe. > > She is, in a sense, a litmus test. > > ]] > > I know vim/vi fairly well, but dont consider it essential knowledge given text > is text, and there are many other text editors. > > OTOH, I dont know how to cook because I earn much more than 100 USD/day. > >> To circle back to the discussion of why standards are written in XML: >> I want the geeky hackery people to make it so easy to do things we know will >> be long-term helpful (such as create standards in tractable, long-term stable >> formats) that the specialists can do it without knowing anything about it. >> >> Our win will come not when we bully the ignorant into learning our way but >> when we make our way easy, invisible, and attractive to people who are paying >> attention to other things. >> >> -- Tommie >> >> =================================================================================== >> B. Tommie Usdin mailto: btusdin@mulberrytech.com >> Mulberry Technologies, Inc. https://www.mulberrytech.com >> Phone: 301/315-9631 >> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Mulberry Technologies, Inc.: A Consultancy Specializing in XML for Prose >> Documents >> =================================================================================== >> >> >> _______________________________________________________________________ >> >> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS >> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize >> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. >> >> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ >> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org >> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org >> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ >> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php >> > > > > -- > > Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ > The Human Hacking Field Guide - https://shlom.in/hhfg > > If you have the same ideas as everybody else, but have them one week earlier > than everyone else — then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have > them five years earlier, you will be named a lunatic. ( Barry Jones ) > > Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - https://shlom.in/reply . > > _______________________________________________________________________ > > XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS > to support XML implementation and development. To minimize > spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. > > [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ > Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org > subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org > List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php > 
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