Microsoft Hatred FAQ

Mike Schilling mscottschilling at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 18 01:33:13 EDT 2005


"John Bokma" <john at castleamber.com> wrote in message 
news:Xns96F2D562581CAcastleamber at 130.133.1.4...
> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> "John Bokma" <john at castleamber.com> wrote in message
>> news:Xns96F2A7259B695castleamber at 130.133.1.4...
>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "John Bokma" <john at castleamber.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:Xns96F1E4E128EA8castleamber at 130.133.1.4...
>>>
>>>>> Yup, but ISO C++ is a standard, and XML is a recommendation.
>>>>
>>>> And the practical difference between the two is....
>>>>
>>>> That's right, nil.
>>>
>>> If you both read them as a collection of words, you're right.
>>> However, as a
>>> (freelance) programmer, things like this *do* make a difference to
>>> me, and my customers.
>>
>> That is, you assume that files claiming to contain XML documents may
>> actually contain some variant of XML, because that's only a
>> recommendation, while files claiming to contain C++ are all
>> ISO-conformant, because that's a standard?
>>
>> If so, you've got things precisely backwards.  C++ compilers that
>> contain extensions or are not quite compliant are everywhere. XML
>> parsers that accept non-well-formed XML are, ASFAIK, non-existent.
>
> My goodness, re read that again please, and rethink what you really want
> to say. I mean "claiming to contain C++". Is that like: all files
> claiming to contain HTML are automatically conforming to the ISO HTML
> standard?

You haven't said why you thinbk "standards" are more valuable than 
"recommendations". We apparently both agree they're no more likely to be 
observed, so what is the reason? 





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