We wanted XML to be implementable in 2 weeks by a grad student.
As opposed to taking an experienced full-time programmer a year,
which was (according to available evidence) closer to the mark for
a full SGML parser.  But the first implementations were in Java
and C rather than in Perl.

The DPH was the person in the documentation department tasked with
(say) changing every reference to part 2006 to part 2009 without
affecting dates... in, say, 100,000 documents of suitably marked-up
XML.  This was a real-life sort of example, and the point was that
we could not (then) assume XML support in text processing languages
such as Perl, so we had to make sure that non-XML-aware tools could
handle XML reliably....

I never took it to reflect on the programming ability of the Perl
programmer, though.

Cheers,
Wendell

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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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