RE: [xml-dev] Readable syntaxes (was: XUL Compact Syntax Study Now Online)

At 6:00 PM +0100 4/21/04, Dave Pawson wrote:

>Are they really rubbish at taking human input, and 'regularising' it,
>such that the wire can understand it?

They are indeed rubbish at such tasks. Computers are way too stupid 
to deal with human produced data unless the much smarter humans take 
special pains to write their documents in a syntax the computers can 
understand. I do believe that eventually the computers will get smart 
enough to process real human authored content, but that day is not 
today. Hell, they can't even reliably read my handwriting or 
recognize my voice yet. Every time I sit down in front of a keyboard 
I'm regularizing my input to meet the limits of the computer.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA