- From: Dave Peterson <davep@acm.org>
- Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 15:03:15 -0500
- To: dgd@cs.bu.edu (David Durand), "Steven J. DeRose" <sjd@ebt.com>, w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 11:08 AM -0500 2/19/97, Steven J. DeRose wrote: >At 12:52 PM 02/18/97 -0800, Joe English wrote: >>Try to resolve either one. If that fails, try the other. >>It doesn't matter which one you try first. >So two systems that do opposite things are both conforming? That seems very >ODA-like (I take that as a negative): "your system can do either the logical >structure, or the layout, or both" -- so immediately you end up with >non-interoperable yet conforming systems. One of my cars requires that I select the gear ratio from a limited numberof choices. The other one gives me only a small amount of control over what gear ratio it selects automatically by a built-in algorithm. If you get a Volvo 960 (and undoubtably many others) you can choose to have absolute control over the gear ratio selection or to let the built-in algorithm make the selection. All three possibilities are useful, make for useful product differentiation, and I for one would be upset if someone felt that they had to mandate which kind of vehicle I owned. Yet they are not directly interoperable systems; I can't count on a user interfacing correctly with one if he or she has developed his or her inteface for the other. (Note: this is an analogy, not an exact parallel. Don't give me grief just because the analogy can be overextended to the point where there are differences.) Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org
Received on Wednesday, 19 February 1997 15:04:26 UTC