[mso] Re: XML Conversation

Well, how about I drop the parts where the answers look like 
rationalizations you're comfortable with. Just note that I don't share 
the rationalization and may hold a certain reluctance to think of those 
areas as anything other than 'flawed'? ;)

I don't think you're being flip but I do think you're too comfortable 
with some of these things that I am not. Thus the risk of appearing 
flip. Not to worry!

I also hope your life changing events turned out okay. Being involved 
with computers tends to make personal events even more expensive. Hope 
you had a contrary experience.

Inline...
Steve Fredette wrote:
>     I almost was tempted to wait for the movie, but...
...the book was better?

> 
>     UM, some of us like the idea of not having to learn binary, that's why 
> they make faster CPUs...

They make faster CPUs to do more work. The point is not to invent more 
work to do a given task. Drives cost up proportionate to hair loss.


>     Sometimes function beats form.
And it was...until we subverted/perverted/abused the function.

> 
>>In such an environment, careless
>>implementation of parsers becomes critical and Microsoft shows an
>>absolutely horrid record for Interfacing its XML parsing libraries over
>>the last 6 years to the point that a change in its XML libraries often
>>forces a top to bottom rebuild of an application depending on those libs.
> 
> 
>     Can you see this happening with Office 07?
Absolutely. Under Office are those very same parsers and a dependency 
upon a library which relies on interfacing rather than overloading to 
accomplish the task. It becomes version Dependant as a result and the 
underlying parser has a tendency to lose binary compatibility from 
version to version. This is sloppy and is less and less a concern in MS 
products. Therefore, I predict we'll see some variation on the problem 
arise in Office.

>     Yes, but the schemas where meant to be proprietary in nature, that's the 
> whole idea. The developer having control. This trickles down to the end 
> user, in that no matter what OS they are running, the data is universal. 
> Yes, this ends up with a higher cost, but not as much as having to have an 
> "expert" come in and translated everything.
?? The data isn't universal until the definition is published and a 
parser can start its expensive string translations. Can't tell the stars 
without a Program kind of situation. And I don't believe you're going to 
see portability across vendor apps with this in Office (which was the 
real point of using XML transforms).

>     I'm still kicking and screaming over not using tables, natively, for 
> layout purposes. Though, just because it's deprecated, doesn't mean you 
> can't still do it. "Backwards compatibility" two of my favorite words :-) 
> (This is were you bring up 508 ;-)
When it's deprecated, compliant tools no longer have to handle these 
elements. Watch your tools slowly lose the capability of handling those 
tags. It will be like playing the browser wars in reverse.

> 
>     I don't think we're getting new "experts" every few years, per se. I 
> think it's more like some just burn out, goodness knows I did for a while 
> there.  Others, may not truly get things at the present, but when "XYZ" is 
> released in 10 years, it'll be their time to shine.
You haven't seen too much of that behavior in Office...but you're about 
too. It was 9 years ago that it was done to Word (death of wordbasic) 
and 4 years ago with VB. It will happen and there won't really be a good 
reason from the consumer's standpoint.

>     I also do not think it's inadequate thought, but more of a "let's keep 
> the stock holders happy" mentality.
Given.

>     I have never met you, but you seem like you would be, until someone took 
> your high score in Asteroids, that is, Then you'd be all determination and 
> leaning to one side, due to all the quarters in your pocket ;-)
Hey! They're *my* quarters, true? ;)

>     Seriously, I hope you do not think I'm being flippant with my replies 
> here. Due an event in my life over the last month, I am becoming quite 
> philosophical in life. None of any of this, will mean anything to any of us, 
> some day, as we pass on. As long as all of this works, and we (either for 
> our clients or for our bosses) can make it work, hence keep a roof over our 
> heads, food on our family's table and time to spend with them, I feel it's 
> worth a few billion extra electrons here and there.
> 
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