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Re: XML Suite Documentation
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Re: XML Suite Documentation


  • Subject: Re: XML Suite Documentation
  • From: Malcolm Fitzgerald <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:34:49 +1000


On 15/06/2006, at 7:41 AM, Christopher Nebel wrote:

However, it's pretty simple [1].

[1] Can someone (ideally someone it happened to) please explain how they got stuck? It would help in writing the documentation. To me, the dictionary seems perfectly straightforward -- files/data have elements, elements have a value, attributes, and other elements -- but then, I already know what "element" and "attribute" mean in XML...

sure, I'll take the bait.

First, for real confusion, it helps if you come to computing from another background, let's say literature and philosophy. The first thing you discover is that the brains behind the concepts use descriptions that don't have natural metaphors. The story doesn't stick, it has to be learned by rote. [1] Why should an element have a value rather than a value have an attribute? The next is that there are competing metaphors. Then you learn that there can be loops, elements within elements. Finally, when you get down to the bits that count you realise that you're at the wedding and you don't know who is who. Is that my first cousin's eldest son talking to my brother's wife's niece or is it my sister-in-laws youngest sister and her boyfriend. To make it worse, the day is done, tomorrow and the next day there are matters of great urgency, so you lose your place and have to start again.



[1] The first thing you (really) discover is that you've lost all memory of your mathematical formulae and algorithms and that several years studying philosophy, even including the philosophy of logic and maths, like Russell, Wittgenstein & Frege, haven't dented your suspicion that there is something very fishy about the theory of probabilities.

malcolm

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References: 
 >XML Suite Documentation (From: email@hidden)
 >Re: XML Suite Documentation (From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>)

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