Re: There Are No Metadocuments

>Allow me to generalize that.  For any DSSSL stylesheet that specifies
>that a certain appearance should be associated with a given node in
>the XML tree, I can imagine a Java program that causes exactly the
>same appearance to be associated with the same node.  Suppose that it
>is impossible to tell the difference between the way the document is
>rendered by a DSSSL engine under the control of a stylesheet and the
>way that the same document is rendered by a collection of Java
>programs.  Does the DSSSL stylesheet constitute a specification of
>appearance and the collection of Java programs constitute a
>specification of behavior?

It's just a matter of interpretation. Code is data is code.
Java bytecodes are nothing more than a processing specification 
until they are interpreted, and there are a number of ways *that*
can be done as well...

As soon as you start defining objects that have some behavioural
semantics associated with them, you also open up the possibility
of people interpreting the semantics.

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 1997 10:06:30 UTC