Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: documentation as info

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Tupshin Harper <address@hidden>

    > I was just saying that your message was devoid of any real criticisms, 
    > and appeared content to be merely inflamatory. Hence the discussion 
    > appeared to be over.

You asked the question (paraphrased) "Must this thread turn into XML
bashing?"

Yes, it must.

I wanted to point out that you should not act so surprised.  

XML and the w3c have done a huge amount of damage.  They, and their
consequential (and intended) effects have harmed many workers, many
users, many students, and it appears, not a few businesses.

And it's _still_ not dead.

Yes, the very appropriate response to nearly all things XML creaping
up on a technical mailing list is to bash it to hell.  The very
appropriate objective is to change XML from a buzzword that people
(still!) gain commercial credibility for invoking into a buzzword
that, by default at least, makes the speaker sound faintly ridiculous.

Our best hope at this point, and it's not a great hope at that, is
that XML will become something like "the Cobol of structured data
formats."  Impossible to kill, of course, but not something worth
pursuing any further.

Are you really at a loss to find many of the available critiques of
XML?  or to evaluate the quality of the available source packages that
purport to implement this or that subset of reams of related
standards?  I would have thought that, by now, that stuff was taken
"as read".


    > I'm not going to defend every usage of XML, since some are certainly 
    > misguided, but neither do I agree that it is inherently harmful and/or 
    > useless. Keep in mind that the XML portion of this thread was 
    > specifically in comparison to SGML. 


I believe the quote that sparked it was:

    >>>> (1) It's butt-ugly, like all sgml derivatives. [...]

In which context, these questions:

    > Are you willing to say that SGML == 
    > good and XML == evil? Or do you think structured markup languages are 
    > bad in general for document production?

bear no relevance.

What exactly do you include in the scope of "structured markup
languages [...] for document production"?   I can't imagine _any_
language for document production that wouldn't be reasonably described
as "structured".

In other words, the "Or" in your question is absurd.


-t