Simon St.Laurent wrote:

>  At 11:20 PM 7/29/00 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>  >Why XML then? What is so special about well-formnedness. I assert that
any
>  >information you can supply in a well-formed document, I can supply in a
>  >non-well formed document.
> 
>  Yes, but if I provide it to you as a well-formed document, you can at
least
>  process the characters I send you according to XML syntax.
> 
>  If I don't, you can't.
> 

Suppose we agree on MIME? If you send me a MIME document, I can process the
characters using a MIME parser in 'MIME syntax' -- so what? It is always
possible to send a perfectly well formed XML document that is totally
useless e.g.
<doc>  <byte>67</byte> <byte>121</byte>... </doc>

The point is that some people might view XML as just a bunch of pointy
brackets, and so what if the syntax is perfect *who cares*. Suppose your
English syntax is perfect but you have nothing to say? What do I care about
syntax?

The only reason we *need* agreed upon syntax is that we have something to
say to eachother (i.e. semantics). What interests me about XML is the
possibility of creating semantically meaningful documents.

Jonathan Borden
http://www.openhealth.org