- From: Len Bullard <cbullard@HiWAAY.net>
- Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 17:04:58 -0500
- To: James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>
- CC: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>, w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
James Clark wrote: > > At 06:54 24/10/96 +0000, Tim Bray wrote: > >At 11:34 AM 24/10/96 +0000, James Clark wrote: > >>At 23:57 23/10/96 +0000, Tim Bray wrote: > >>>1. external text entities are a basic necessity for authoring ... > > > >>I would like to point that at least one person on the ERB (me) passionately > >>believes that this viewpoint is totally misguided... > >>... it is certainly possible to build a fine authoring > >>environment without any use of external text entities. > > > >James is correct; it is certainly possible to do this. But SGML provides > >a built-in, standard, nonproprietary way to go about it. The way I sell > >SGML in the corporate world is: > > > >SGML gives you: > > 1. a way to model the structure of your documents, and > > 2. a way to control the authoring so they come out right, and > > 3. a way to modularize documents for re-use and management, and > > 4. ALL OF THIS IS STANDARDIZED AND NON-PROPRIETARY > > > >It seems to me that if XML loses text entities, then #4 no longer applies > >to #3. > > I think you can get 3 and 4 without external text entities by using > transclusion via link semantics, which are going to be standardized in a > later phase of XML. > > James Agreed. When explaining external text entities to new SGML users, they invariably leap to the conclusion these are hypertext links. They are usually disappointed when I explain these are not. They then ask, why the extra features. We dropped these from the IADS and IDE/AS designs for precisely this reason: we were getting this functionality from the hyperlinks. Wouldn't an independent link with a semantic of <get> do this job? len bullard
Received on Thursday, 24 October 1996 18:04:44 UTC