Re: Second International Symposium on Invisible XML

Hi again,

This is fine (and Graydon is thoughtful as always), but once again someone
sees an insoluble dilemma, where I see an opportunity for useful
combination.

Must all oppositions be intractable? By all means, it is up to the
conference organizers how to define its scope, and iXML is well worth
having a conference about, by any name. (If it's any comfort, I didn't
suggest "Universal Grammars" should be in the title, just not turned away
at the door.)

Cheers, Wendell

On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 11:08 AM Graydon Saunders <graydonish@fastmail.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 21, 2026, at 10:23, Wendell Piez wrote:
>
> In view of that fact, and of the fact that (we are agreeing, I think) not
> to "hide" iXML but to put it in lights -- can't we consider having a
> universal grammars conference? Are we afraid of who might come?
>
>
> iXML makes formerly rather intractable things (like regularizing postal
> addresses or legislative history notes, where there's a common thread of
> intent but not necessarily a single consistent pattern of language) much
> easier to do; there's a significant initial cost (writing the grammar) but
> after that it's much more maintainable than the other available approaches
> would be. I think that generates a pattern of interest: this thing can make
> a class of problems (which I am expected to solve) significantly more
> tractable, I want to know more about that.
>
> Universal grammars are a couple steps back from that; there isn't any
> class of problem I am expected to solve that I know to benefit from
> applying a universal grammar. I'm a lot less interested in a discussion of
> universal grammars in consequence. That doesn't mean it would be a bad
> subject for a conference, but it's a different subject for a conference and
> I think the folks who've gone and built all this iXML infrastructure have a
> reasonable basis for making a conference they put together mostly about
> this thing they've built and the problems it can solve.
>
> -- Graydon
>


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