RE: [Bug 5152] tableau presentation difficult to understand

> >> At the risk of upsetting people, why do we use the word "tableau" 
> >> when most people would use "table"?  To me, this is what I call 
> >> gratuitous pomposity.
> >
> > Gratuitous pomposity? Nonsense, just charming eccentricity.
> 
> As you didn't include an exclamation mark at the end (or 
> smiley - arghh) I'll assume this is a serious comment rather 
> than a joke comment...

The comment was intended to be light-hearted. There are many places where
the schema spec is indeed excessively pompous, and it falls into a number of
categories:

(a) a slightly eccentric choice of terminology, of which this is an example

(b) self-justification. I think we've got rid of some of the worst examples
of this

(c) unnecessarily long and complex sentence structures

(d) over-reliance on typographical devices that make the text harder to
read, whereas typography should always strive to make it easier.

Of these, I find the use of eccentric terms like "tableau" the least
objectionable. The worst terminological offences are terms that appear to be
used in a technical sense, but actually have no definition: an example is
"coherent".

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/