RE: DTD for protocol-03?

	From: Yaron Goland <yarong@microsoft.com>
	
	Funny, we have somehow managed to implement the DAV drafts without
	having to actually DTDs. I guess I will just have to go tell the
	developers that what they have done is impossible. I'm sure they will be
	pleased.

Funny, he said that a machine processable syntax would allow you to
save work by leveraging an XML parser, and you point out that you
were able to duplicate the effort. No one said it was impossible, just
a waste of time, and another point for errors to creep in
(since a prose definition is more likely to have errors than a
mechanistic one).

I notice you didn't continue to make unsupported claims about the
standard... Maybe you tried reading it and realized that those were
not good points of attack?
	
My concern is that you have said several untrue things about XML in a
public context. I allowed the hostile tone of your post to get under
my skin. I continue to recommend reading the standard if you want to
state true things about what it says. If you want to comment on the
history of the standard you can read the several thousand email
messages that have constituted that development, or you can take the
word of some of those who have (Terry, Dave Hollander, me).

Whether you choose to ignore relevant standards, and use prose
definition instead of executable ones in WebDAV is not my primary
concern at the moment.  I may have time to worry about that someday.

I have left some of Terry's original note in place, in support of the
contention that he never claimed anything was _impossible_.

	
   -- David

	> -----Original Message-----
	> From:	Terry Allen [SMTP:tallen@sonic.net]
	> Sent:	Tuesday, October 07, 1997 11:23 AM
	> To:	ejw@ics.uci.edu; tallen@sonic.net; Yaron Goland
	> Cc:	w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
	> Subject:	RE: DTD for protocol-03?
  ... snip snipo ....
	> 
	> | So given that we MUST provide a BNF definition and that DTDs are old
	> | news, I see no reason to waste valuable time trying to maintain two
	> | separate definitions of the same material. If and when the XML
	> Schema
	> | group produces a usable finished product I will be the first to
	> support
	> | its adoption, until then, time is a scarce resource and there is no
	> | reason to waste it trying to write DTDs which only a tiny fraction
	> of
	> | our community can use.
	> 
	> Every member of "your community" can use a DTD for validating
	> instances.
	> Time is indeed a scarce resource; a DTD would provide a useful,
	> compact,
	> and machine-readable and -processable description of what is now only
	> a long ordered list.  
------------------------------------------+----------------------------
David Durand                 dgd@cs.bu.edu| david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        | Dynamic Diagrams
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/  | http://dynamicDiagrams.com/
                                          | MAPA: mapping for the WWW

Received on Tuesday, 7 October 1997 20:07:01 UTC