- From: Jon Bosak <bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 23:06:35 -0800
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@www10.w3.org
- CC: bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM
[Murray Altheim:]
| bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM (Jon Bosak) writes:
| >[...] ("Supported for everything" implies a shared
| >vocabulary of some kind; I'm assuming that you have something like
| >HTML in mind. Without *some* common understandings you can never
| >figure out what to do, because then you don't know what I mean at all.
[...]
| I certainly agree on principle with the idea of a shared link vocabulary,
| but I was under the impression that we would specify the link syntax as an
| architecture and supply the hooks to allow document authors to use their
| own personal (eg., non-English) language for links to that architecture.
[...]
Yes, and that would keep the English-language shared vocabulary out of
the author's face more than a scheme that put English-language
reserved attributes on everything. But hiding it doesn't make that
shared vocabulary disappear, and the gain in apparent friendliness
comes at the cost of another layer of indirection.
The point that I refuse to let go of is that you have to specify a
shared vocabulary *somewhere*. You can't wave a magic wand and make
it go away. You can play more or less elaborate shell games to hide
it, but the pea is still under there.
The only way I can see to establish the common semantic framework
needed to make XML applications interoperate without using
English-language labels at some layer of the system is to use numeric
codes.
Jon
Received on Sunday, 26 January 1997 02:06:44 UTC