🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23271C@erik.naggum.no> SGML@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes:
>Darrell Raymond <drraymon@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> writes:
>|
>|     Apart from minutiae, Erik seems to have missed the whole point of
>|   the discussion between Eliot and myself.  I wanted to draw attention
>|   to the fact that SGML enforces certain relationships and permits
>|   arbitrary other ones outside of itself, and that the latter should
>|   not be counted as "being represented in SGML" (hence the overlap
>|   problem).
>
>Why?  We already knew that.

No, somebody didn't. Somebody said "SGML: it's not just for text
any more. It can model any kind of information."

I don't see Darrell's arguments as some facist attack on SGML. Erik,
not everybody is trying to make a personal attack on you or SGML.
Darrell just took issue with the idea that all information
modelling relationships can be enforced by the SGML parser.

>Your attempt to say that the semantics that SGML can't express is
>somehow non-portable, just goes to say that you wouldn't know the
>documentation for an SGML system or SGML application from a gnat if it
>bit you.  It is evident that you have never _seen_ an SGML application,
>much less grasped enough to identify one as such if you saw it.  That
>makes your arguments academic at best, and irrelevant at worst.
>

Erik, do you mean to say that the documentation accompanying an
SGML prologue is sufficient to define the semantics of the information
modelling relationships in a well-defined and portable way?
Do you mean to say, that is, that english (i.e. natural language)
is a sufficient specification language? Please! You must agree
that a natural language description of a problem is "potentially
non-portable."

On the other hand, I am beginning to see your point about the
scope of an SGML application: if the application chooses to define
its semantics in English in a non-portable way, then the application
itself is non-portable, independent of any SGML features used.

>I think both Eliot and Steve have been exceedingly patient with you, and
>have taken you seriously to a far greater extent than you deserved.  I
>stopped being patient with you about ten days ago, but find it necessary
>to comment on your confusion because there might be people out there who
>would otherwise be led to believe that you're right, and that you know
>SGML well enough to make the statements you do, with the authority you
>would like have, but don't.  Since you're don't even understand a basic
>concept with regard to SGML's role and its scope and field of
>application (see the standard, clauses 1 and 2), your authority needed
>to be shot down, and your false and arbitrary statements proven to what
>they are.
>
I don't see Darrell's comments as "false and arbitrary" at all. In fact,
you've conceded his point at least three times in your article.

I believe that the claim was made that "SGML can model any kind
of information relationship." This is the sort of "false and
arbitrary statement" that needs to be proven so.

In doing so, Darrell seems to have touched a nerve, and Erik has
buried the original argument in a "don't make anti-SGML comments"
tantrum.

Dan