Re: HTML and XML

On 16 Feb 2009, at 12:06, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Bijan Parsia wrote:
>> ...
>> In one graduate course (with the majority of students being PhD  
>> students), the students were supposed to produce a simple RDF/XML  
>> document. The majority of the submissions (IIRC) were not well  
>> formed XML.
>> ...
>
> I really having trouble believing this,

Thanks!

> unless the students weren't told about how XML syntax works (were  
> they?), and how to check it (such as simply dropping the document  
> into IE).

First, it's been 4-5 years, so I don't know I recall every detail  
correctly.

Here is the assignment (which took me a while to find, sorry):
	http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hendler/CMSC828y/asst1b.html
I *believe* I told them about the IE trick. Hard to imagine that I  
wouldn't, but, of course, I've no direct evidence.

DTDs with errors in major coursework in the presence of oXygen and  
pretty extensive training is within the past few weeks.

Second, uhm, well isn't this part of the point? It's hard to evaluate  
these claims stripped of context. Prima facie, claims of ease of  
authoring (of any strict computer format) is the *extraordinary*  
claim, thus requires backing.

(Also, not all computers run IE :))

I would think that the main point is that in isolation simplicity is  
not, itself, a reliable indicator of over all usability. I would be  
very interested to have good evidence that XML formats have good  
usability (and in what circumstances).

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Monday, 16 February 2009 13:43:22 UTC