Re: XML Suite Documentation
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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