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Right. The problems won't go away. That doesn't mean a repository isn't worthwhile. Libraries are worthwhile. It just isn't going to work as a way to eliminate the tower of babel any more than a library gets rid of slang or argot and for similar reasons: humans are relentlessly creative; situations are notoriously local. All the time spent on SGML (and no doubt most standardization efforts before it) taught us the value of transform languages and the locality of definitions. CALS taught us that not even the most stringent Secretaries of Poo could make it happen by fiat. On the other hand, when humans want to cooperate, libraries are a good place to start and XML provides for tools to do it at the level of standardization that makes the most of low hanging fruit: the lexical. Just don't bet the farm on it. Semantic Webbers be wise about this. It is rather easy to write N/A and NONE as the values of URI'd thingies. Pointers to NULL won't tell the machine much. len -----Original Message----- From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@m...] That quote was from the article -- I was simply quoting it because it summed up the hopelessly idealistic attitude that such problems could ever be eliminated (and that by having a "repository"). So we agree
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