Re: Giving up on XML

[Janice Gelb <janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com>]

Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> Mike didn't say anything about "global standards,"
> merely that he didn't need a nanny to make sure
> he didn't violate the standards he's using, i.e., his
> own.
> 

The context of his remarks were that he didn't
need a tool that imposed structure because
"in spite of not having been created by an
"official" Structured Document Authoring Tool®,
it could still actually be a structured document."
Then later, he said that if a document skipped
levels, it could still be hierarchically intact
and it was only his built-in standards that he
adhered to.

This seemed to me to be contrasting what a
structured document authoring tool might
impose as a hierarchy and what he himself
considered to be an acceptable hierarchy.

I don't mean to be getting into an individual
catfight with anyone, really, I don't. However,
this seemed to me to be illustrative of one of
the problems that structured languages like SGML
try to prevent: individual writers deciding based
on their own aesthetics or personal views on
documentation how their documents should be
structured and styled rather than all documents
from a company having the same predictable structure
and look and feel.

If Mike works on his own as a sole writer at
a company and the company is happy with his
aesthetics and his professional judgments about
structure, then he's right that his tools and
environment are working fine for him. But in
an environment where documentation sets are
being produced by numerous writers and text
potentially could be reused in different outputs,
I think that consistent structure and appearance
is an important benefit to be gained by using a
structured authoring language.

-- Janice

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Janice Gelb          | The only connection Sun has with
janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com  | this message is the return address

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