Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: T. Nelson -- Doesn't understand XML?

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:11/10/1999; 1:22:45 PM
Topic:T. Nelson Critique of Embedded Markup
Msg #:12954 (In response to 12953)
Prev/Next:12953 / 12955

Dennis Peterson wrote:

Well this is true, and probably the biggest challenge that XML has to face. My point is just that we need to semantically agree on the meaning of our documents, and I tend to think that keeping the tags embedded will facilitate that better than putting them off to the side. Maybe somebody will prove me wrong, though!

Thanks for the reminder as to what the original point was! ;-)

I don't think it can be "proven" one way or the other, particularly without discussing how the software that manipulates the content and the metadata behaves. Even given those specifications, I'm certain other relevant issues would be overlooked: the relative power of servers between when Nelson first started investigating the issues vs. today, whether the expectation is of random access to content or streamed access, etc.

Suffice it to say that I have always agreed wholeheartedly with Xanadu's goals and, by extension, huge swaths of Nelson's philosophy. When it gets to implementation details, however, I try to be more flexible!

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