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Michael Champion wrote: > I'd also note that the slightly desperate tone of > some of the early posts in this thread remind me > of SGML advocates in the '90s, who could see the > benefits that standardized markup could bring and > couldn't believe why the world didn't realize them. Having been one of those who undoubtedly exhibited the "desperate tone" let me say that you're probably right on the analogy to the SGML folk who knew why standard markup was good but couldn't understand why others couldn't see it. But, it is worse than that... You see, we've been here before... Back in the early 80's when we were beginning the process of defining what eventually became X.400, X.500, ASN.1 etc., the ASN.1 world had a long drawn-out battle with the SGML folk over the encoding to use. For many really good reasons (processing speed, compact encoding, clarity of specification, etc.) ASN.1 beat the forces of IBM, Goldfarb, etc. and all was good. Until the 90's when the SGML guys came screaming back with HTML and XML while ASN.1 got dragged down with the rest of the OSI mess. Now, it is at least 20 years after this debate began and there is still no end in sight. But, the basic principles of good design haven't changed. It is *still* better to design using abstract concepts, not concrete and there is *still* a need for non-textual encodings... bob wyman
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