From: Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@...>
Date: 2002-02-24T04:25:14+09:00
Subject: Re: rdoc/xml questions

james@rubyxml.com wrote:

 > The problem I have with many of these markup syntax is that the
 > specific cases often  do not do quite what I want (or require you
 > to opt-in to a particular modeling philosophy), and the broader,
 > extensible formats become annoyingly complex for even simple
 > descriptions.

Well, anyways:
Before developing a new document type, one should review existing ones.

Often, there are near perfect options, debugged and publicly reviewed 
for long periods. You don't only get tools, but interoperability. 
(Unlike you state above, instances of general schemas aren't necessarily 
complex; see SVG, which is a huge general spec, yet you can write simple 
and efficient instances. It wouldn't make sense to write your own vector 
language.)

 > There's a tradeoff when buying into someone else's spec: you get
 > some reuse of tools and whatnot, but you may have to kludge the
 > syntax to express what you want.

If there's no schema available that fits, then there's no reason to use 
one that doesn't fit.

 > As with the discussion on a Ruby-way XML API, rdoc may do best with
 > a Ruby-way markup syntax (whatever that happens to be).

It may well be so. But what's the problem with reviewing existing 
schemas before developing a custom one?

Tobi

-- 

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