Re: Can everyone be happy?

Tim Berners-Lee wrote:

>  Is there a complete inability here to comprehend something whcih is not a
> string of characaters?

All right. I'll bite once again.

Many--I daresay all--of us understand a great many different things which are
'more' than a string of characters:  are semantics, in fact, elaborated by
differing processes for differing purposes from, ultimately, syntactic
structures which can be adequately described at one level as a 'string of
characters'. The key point is how our purposes and, by extension, the processes
which serve them, differ. Given our differing interests and specializations it
is hubris to suppose that we can reconcile and--even more difficult--maintain
ongoing agreement on the full range of detailed semantics which collectively
illustrate, even define, our differences. We therefore settle for workable
compromise on common syntax from which we differently elaborate our specialized
semantics. Each of us may offer a different exegesis, but the implicit basis of
civility in our community is that our efforts must stop short of forced
conversion.

> When a subcommunity within the web denegrates, misuses and
> generally abuses though lack of understanding another part of the
> web architecture it unfortunately falls on staff at W3C to try to hold
> the web together.   This is no fun.

It is unclear that the community of interest for documents or data structures
created according to the rules of XML syntax is, or even closely approximates,
the (proper noun) Web of the eponymous W3C. That difference underlies much of
the suspicion and hostility we see on this list. One particularly illustrative
example follows:

> If, as Eve suggests, the xml subcommunity (maybe out of pure "not invented
> here" syndrome)
> would like to break free of nasty URIs and reinvent an entire new system
> under their own control, and re-attack the problems of establishment and
> delegation
> of authority, and distributed name services, then that is of course the
> choice
> which  anyone can make, and people do indeed try this every few years.
>
> The advisory comittee would have to think very hard about pledging resources
> to such a fragmentary effort and I would have to think very hard as to
> whether
> I would see XML as a useful markup language for the web.

Respectfully,

Walter Perry

Received on Thursday, 22 June 2000 09:19:11 UTC