Re: There Are No Metadocuments

Terry Allen wrote:

> These "metadocuments" sound to me exactly like "the real, full
> document with all its trimmings."  I know SGMLllers are used to thinking
> about the marked-up text as distinct from the style sheet, etc.,
> but for the purposes of publishing that text, the whole ball of
> stuff can be considered to be not document+meta, but just
> document (including some meta, nothing wrong with that).
> 
> Considering documents this way might clarify discussion (and then
> again, maybe not), and it would certainly clarify explanation:
> "An XML document can be a complex structure, including a style
> sheet or even choice of style sheets, and some metainformation
> about who and how it was produced, just like a Word document
> carries its formatting and some meta along with its text, although
> you don't see everything when you look at it in Word."

If we are going to go down this path, let's not call this "ball of stuff" a document. An object (WebObject) might be a better moniker since we should include behavior as well as appearance in the ball.

My personal preference would be to include references to behavior (code) and appearance (style sheets). Without that separation reuse is difficult and object management is seriously impaired.

Received on Monday, 10 February 1997 16:59:19 UTC