-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Murray Stokely wrote: > On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Chuck Robey <chu...@telenix.org> wrote: >> You said that most written things are hierarchical. Sorry, I strongly >> disagree, > > I disagree also. Nobody on this thread said that except you. Your > entire response is based on this significant mis-quote.
Yeah, I did a fubar, and in that sentence, inverted things by droppig the word "not". My comments were all directed towards the fact that xml is (and enforces) a hierarchical approach to writing, and that (outside of tech manuals and web pages) most written things aren't hierarchical in nature. > > What I did say, is that _technical manuals_ are generally > hierarchical, and I was also thinking of some of the same examples you > brought up (scifi books, personal correspondence, etc..) when choosing > which qualifier to use when writing that statement. > > You actually agree with this statement later in this mail where you > acknowledge that tech manuals and the handbook benefit from this > approach "but not most things". Again, pretty obvious, when you give the fact that I'd left out the "not". I'd have thought that would have been a more obvious mistake, given my original post's nature. > >> which are easily handled by far simpler tools) very few of them have any >> need of >> hierarchical database approaches. At least my Physics textbooks, which I'm > > My use of hierarchy was based on chapters, sections, and paragraphs, > as I said in my mail. My textbooks all had that. Is there a difference between a book where the information is organized in topics, and a book which is full of references which change all the time and could benefit from using a database approach? I could as well claim that the Bible needed that support, instead of merely being broken up for easier access. It ought to be clearly obvious that most printed materials have no intrinsic need for any of xml's database-like features (like, say, any commercial web site obviously *does* need). You have moved the > discussion from a hierarchy of chapters, sections, and paragraphs into > one involving "hierarchical database approaches". Wow, that bothers me, it's a direct distortion. I have posted on this twice. In the first one, I never even mentioned the terms Chapters, sections, or paragraphs, and in the second, I only mentioned chapters in passing, to show that their use in most printed matter was merely to allow easier topic access, NOT to supply the kind of database access commonly used by commercial websites like Newegg. Since I started this thread, it's never been a "discussion from a hierarchy of chapters, sections, and paragraphs", it's always been an examination of the usefulness of xml in printed matter. I made one error at the top, in dropping the word "non", but that's as far as it goes, fella. My thesis is (and has been) that xml's main added feature over pre-existing formatters (like groff) is that xml requires a hierarchical approach so that database techniques can be used, and that those database features are an unneeded frill in most printed matter. And, that merely breaking things up into chapters makes no use of those database features, so terribly and obviously used in most commercial websites. And, I detailed a host of features groff has that xml has never had. NO ONE AT ALL was discussing chapters, paragraphs, and sections. I made one error at the top, dropping (once) the word "non". Outside of your distortion, that's your whole argument? Could we move this BACK to the topic of groff versus xml? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkl+IW0ACgkQz62J6PPcoOme5QCfWt7+8/qaFogcqva+Ge80Djje yoUAn1nOSL0pmajHOVYrHfWLE+8JyPis =CkuD -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ freebsd-chat@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chat To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-chat-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
