Re: documents, files, types, and access methods

Edward Vielmetti (emv@ox.com)
Thu, 05 Dec 91 19:14:37 -0500 

Message-Id: <m0kpTDB-000Ds7C@shelley.aa.ox.com>
To: connolly@pixel.convex.com
Cc: wais-talk@think.com, tcl@allspice.berkeley.edu, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: documents, files, types, and access methods 
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 05 Dec 91 12:16:11 -0600.
             <9112051816.AA29899@pixel.convex.com> 
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 91 19:14:37 -0500
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>

data, data, data, data, data.

if you have good ideas about document structure and ways to send
messages around that have magic cookies in them, that's good.  but in
order to convince anyone to do anything substantial in terms of
software development you need to provide data.

get 100 entries describing 100 things that are useful, add enough
structure that a motivated party can pull your database apart and
create something new from it, and people will start to write code.
(honest.)  produce another 10 entries a month for a year and more
people will write code or bend their existing code to work with your
system.

Don't wait for an all-singing, all-dancing standard before you start
to collect information.  If you gather enough stuff and organize it
well, other people will do the work of bringing it up to what is
considered standard (if and when that happens).  You do need to be
thorough in making sure that whatever you do is consistent and regular
enough to be worth retrofitting.

-- 
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
       MSEN, Inc. 628 Brooks Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120