On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: >> >> What I find rather puzzling here is that most of the defenders of the >> status quo are saying 'document format is really no big deal, why make >> a fuss'. > > ?? I haven't seen anybody argue that, actually, and it would > be odd if they did. I see numerous statements of that form in the thread. >> I am in class E. I find being required to edit documents in >> teleprinter format to be very insulting to me personally. > > That's another odd argument, although it does tend to > support that this is a matter of individual sensibilities. > As nearly as I can tell, people who like to work lower in > the stack tend to prefer certain kinds of formats and > people who work higher in the stack tend to prefer others. > People who don't like strongly-typed languages probably aren't > going to be enthusiastic about strongly-typed document > formats. It could come down to tastes and possibly > to comfort level with various tools, and it seems unlikely > to me that haranguing people about it will change their > personal relationships with the various technologies. And people wonder why the applications people have mostly deserted to W3C and/or OASIS. I don't see the relevance of strong typing. When I worked on routing level issues I was using formal methods to specify them. It does not get any more strongly typed than Z/VDM. One of the reasons I prefer using XML for document preparation is that it allows me to use automated tools to assemble / validate individual components of the spec. For example when I was working on SAML 1.0 I had scripts that generated the schema and documentation from a source file and then validated the examples against the schema. -- New Website: http://hallambaker.com/ View Quantum of Stupid podcasts, Tuesday and Thursday each week, http://quantumofstupid.com/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf