A Modest Proposal -- <wink>

[Patrick Phalen]

[Magnus L. Hetland, on Sat, 13 Nov 1999]:

:: But - if you have XPPMS, why do you need XWTSNTSDL? You could just
:: transform
:: 
::    This is some text <wink>
:: 
:: into
:: 
::    <wink>This is some text</wink>
:: 
:: and Bob's your uncle... Then you can use standard XML tools... :)


I am against this notion, for several reasons. 

1. XPPMS should disavow any attempt to do anything useful. I thought we
had all agreed to this. It's in the spec!

2. It gratuitously introduces containment and well-formedness, which,
in turn, threatens several key objectives of XWTSNTSDL, XGNBAML, and
XACL, namely:

* Make XML software significantly harder to write
* Make source files significantly harder to read

We must be especially cautious not to introduce any changes at
this point which might make XML easier to teach to beginners.