EDITORIAL (was: Re: Seeking a Dao of Groves)

[Peter Murray-Rust]

At 02:18 PM 1/28/00 +0100, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
>
>* Simon North
>|
>| Lars Marius Garshol said:
>| 
[... misattributed quote ...]
>
>Just for the record: that quote was by Uche Ogbuji, not me. 

A moderatorial encouragement to try to always include the source of a
quotation. [There have been a few recently where I would be unable to
determine the source and even whether it can from the list. I also express
a preference for putting the quoted material before the reply. And, in
general, keeping the quoted material short.]

I look at the postings on XML-DEV in a new light because we are clearly
seeing a need for careful explanation of many of the aspects of "XML". [I
use this term to cover the subjects that come up on this list :-) - they
include philosophy and practice as well as syntax, semantics and software.]
I have the feeling that there are chunks of discussion which are important
for the correct interpretation and implementation and benefit from being:
	- identified for "posterity" [this could be as little as a few days' hence!]
	- abstracted.
I am pleased and flattered to see the existence of secondary publications
(eclectic and XML-deviant) which at least tackle the first. We have a good
history of postings to this list which have encapsulated the current wisdom
at that time. For example, about 2.5 years ago I used this list to raise my
inability to understand groves culminating in a posting from James Clark
about a Simple Property Set for XML. [I can't give the ref as I can't
immediately find the posting - this highlights a point below!] 

At one stage I abstracted the list on an ad hoc basis, creating
"XML-Jewels", which lasted for about a year. Some people found this useful.
It died from problems of time and also because there were other sites which
fulfilled some functions better (e.g. listing parsers, DTDs, etc.) However
it did a have modest role as index and commentary.

Because of the very high quality of many individual postings, and also of
some threads I am wondering how we may be able to index these at the time.
The hypermail system has never been under our control and so we couldn't
add feedback forms, for example, but in principle it could be useful for
readers (or editors!) to be able to flag/index those postings which were of
special value - there have been many. But most readers aren't aware of
them, and we don't have very precise search tools.

	Are there opportunities here? Either for greater input of metadata by
authors, or by editors?

	P.


   

>
>--Lars M.
>
>
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