At 8:20 PM -0500 6/18/97, len bullard wrote: >In complete agreement with David and Mathew. Always nice to hear that. But... >The argument of "not liked in WebLand" is irrational. >It is all too easy to lightly dismiss a decade of work in which one did >not >participate and does not bear one's imprimatur. >All redefining the DTD into uselessness does is increase the >urge to abandon XML work and return to fixing SGML. That >process will be more rational than one in which faceless, nameless >wordless entities set the rules, the tenor, and the outcome. Nyet. I don't really agree here. I think SGML will _not_ fill the role XML _may_ fill, so I don't think this is an option, at least for me. >The XML reference to ISO 8879 must be normative to prevent precisely >this kind of bad judgement and unregulated process. I still disagree with this. A normative reference turns 8879 into mandatory reading for implementors, and implies that _if_ there's a hole in the XML spec, then 8879 may automatically be invoked to clarify things -- and I don't think that XML can assume that 8879 will give the best solution to unanticipated problems. The XML standard must be free-standing -- It's up to us to make sure that it is. We can't use 8879 as a crutch, but have to resolve our own problems here. I may be arguing a conservative line on this issue, but it's not because I believe that we _shouldn't ever_ extend on 8879, but that we had better _understand_ any extensions we do, and _all_ the implications. -- David _________________________________________ David Durand dgd@cs.bu.edu \ david@dynamicDiagrams.com Boston University Computer Science \ Sr. Analyst http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/ \ Dynamic Diagrams --------------------------------------------\ http://dynamicDiagrams.com/ MAPA: mapping for the WWW \__________________________Received on Thursday, 19 June 1997 12:41:41 EDT
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