Re: Comments triggered by Tom's comments

[Dave Hollander <dmh@commerce.net>]

At 11:49 AM 1/22/00 -0600, Mike Rawlins wrote:
>Sorry, but I don't understand a few of your points below.  Would you please clarify?
>
>Dave Hollander wrote:
>
> > I read with interest these emails and appreciate being part of the
> > teleconference today. I wish my schedule did not conflict with this
> > effort (ebXML) so much and I could participate more.
> >
> > One quick note about a commnent I sent do Tom and Jean replied to:
> >
> > >THIS BRINGS ME TO THE FOLLOWING POINT YOU MENTION:
> > >
> > >A single flavor of XML--I can think of nothing so damming.
> > >XML was created (I wrote the mission statement) to overcome
> > >the "wrong thinking" that any single semantic language could
> > >be "the solution". At that time, HTML was thought to be within
> > >one or two revisions from being the universal markup language.
> > >
> > >I MUST NOTE HERE THAT, AS PER TODAY, TIME PROVED THAT COMMENT WRONG: HTML IS THE
> > >UNIVERSAL MARKUP LANGUAGE, AND EVEN OUR SECRETARIES KNOW HOW TO USE AND USE IT.
> > >IF WE WOULD ACHIEVE THE SAME RESULT WITH XML, BINGO WE HAD THE JACKPOT. AND I
> > >CAN DREAM OF OUR SECRETARIES CAPTURING DATA AUTOMATICALLY FROM THERE E-MAIL
> > >DOCUMENTS OR WORDPROCESSOR ETC.
> >
> > Different intension of universal. I intended it in the sense of the one and
> > only which is different than everyone knows it. Yes HTML is universal
> > but if it was the one-and-only then why are there so many DTDs?
> >
> > XML is best used, at least in the view of many including myself, when each
> > element is designed to express a semantic that is relevant to the information.
>
>Isn't a "semantic that is relevant to the information" a bit redundant? ;^)

You would think so, but consider semantics like RTF that only deal with one
persons idea of how it should be rendered. My point is that the different 
information needs different semantic domains to represent it.  LegalXML would
not help art critiques very much.

> >
> > Generic languages like HTML can only go so far before people do things like
> > consider heading tags as "large bold font" as so common with today's usage of
> > XML.  Tag abuse assures information can be reused without human intervention.
>
>I don't really follow your points here.  Are you saying that in today's usage of XML
>people are starting to use tags such as <LARGE_BOLD_FONT> ?  

No, I am saying that to most people (I was webmaster of Fortune 500 for 2 years)
H1 only means Large-bold-font and is seldom used to identify a first level head.

>Is this what you
>consider abuse, or something else?  Also, if abuse assures that information can be
>reused without human intervention, then from why call it abuse?  That's exactly what
>we need in EDI applications of XML.

Typing mistake. Tag abuse prevents reuse.  Garbage-in-garbage-out.
Using the behavior of applications to decide what tag to mark up a document with,
instead of the semantic from the domain relevant to the information (not presentation)
will result in any tag that behaves being use. I have seen this trend in many other
structured applications as well as HTML.

Regards,
Dave
> >

__________________________________________________________
Dave Hollander
Director eCommerce Knowledge Management and Interoperability
CommerceNet
Co-chair W3C XML Schema Working Group
dmh@commerce.net 
970-613-0605
__________________________________________________________