The latest 22.0 version of the Oxygen XML editor (or really, IDE) has a feature I have not seen before, which is to validate Markdown with Schematron. Of course, it has always been possible to transform from non-XML to XML and then validate that. And Schematron of course allows diagnostic…
...Fanout versus Confusion: two complexity metrics
In electrical engineering, fan-out means the number of logic gate inputs some logic gate (technology) can drive: early computers used diode logic that allowed 0 fanout: you could only have fan-in (the number of input gates some logic has), while modern technologies allow potentially a fanout in the thousands. This…
...Is this the most stupid XML patent?
Every year or so, I glance at patents related to Schematron and XML. There are a lot of bad ones, with no inventive step: it is wrong to think of them all as just scams on investors or land grabs, I think they are mainly taken up defensively: the patent…
...“Step Out of Time” with Schematron: getting the Plot not just the Story
Schematron was developed out of an attempt to imagine a non-toy schema language for people who thought different. In particular, after the wonderful Professor C. C. Hsieh explained to me that the Chomsky-style grammar, which DTDs were based on, was amenable to Westerners because it matched our simply-tokenized languages and…
...Fundamental Structural Patterns Bolognese
Schematron has a construct called abstract pattern. This is a pattern where all the implementation details (such as the specific element names) can be provided as parameters of the abstract pattern. In Schematron currently, abstract patterns are just a macro, syntactic sugar which is does not pass through to the…
...The Fastest Growing Programming Language of 2018 and Good Things Needed for Schematron to Grow
This time of year journalists amuse themselves by making lists of the most popular programming languages for the year. A lot of people are interested, for career reason. “The” So what was *the* fastest growing programming for 2018? Kotlin, according to GitHub’s The State of the Octoverse report. We’re seeing…
...Will the Circle be Unbroken? Now the Wheel of Life crushes JSON too…
Technologies come and go, and technologies that don’t change die! That is was the lesson of SGML, where XML took over because the standards process actively worked to stifle change. And it was the lesson of XML, where JSON took over the ephemeral web traffic because the W3C process couldn’t…
...The most interesting Class of Computer Languages
In the previous blog (XML as a canary in the mine: can Intel IPSC help stagnant C get its mojo back?), I mentioned three classes of languages that are thriving, plus one that I suggest is not. But that leaves out what I think is the most interesting class of…
...XML as a canary in the mine: can Intel ISPC help stagnant C get its mojo back?
JSON is the best thing that every happened to XML. It whack-a-moles most new bright ideas people have that shoehorn XML into applications XML is not a good fit for. Hooray. (Which is not to say JSON is an unmitigated success!) XML is getting used for what it is good…
...Using XPath to make Assertions is now a common technique
The idea of using XPath in a schema language about structured data probably first came up with Dave Raggett’s Assertion Grammars. This was a recasting DTDs that allowed (I don’t know if this part was ever implemented) the context element to specified using an XPath: called Conditions. I think of…
...European Patent Crisis needs to be resolved: 0(n²): the junk-patent catch-up race
The Register has a disappointing news story Patent Quality has fallen, confirms Euro examiners. It reports that nearly 1,000 patent examiners have written to the European Patent Office’s (EPO) Administrative Council (their board) to say that to follow the management requirements would actually result in them breaching their duty and…
...How many developers think different?
The StackOverflow yearly survey came out today. This week I have been writing some posts thinking about what modes of thinking, jobs, technologies, debugging strategies might be suitable for developers with smaller working memories or below average short-term-memory-consolidation. And I have suggested that the emphasis in the hiring exams of…
...Analysis versus Synthesis: are we atuned to each kind of thinking?
Does some of the supposed discrimination in the hiring policy of high tech companies actually have the common root cause that while the companies’ hiring regimes are brilliant at identifying useful analytical thinkers they are weak at finding useful synthetic thinkers? (In fact, the regimes may actually weed out useful…
...Common Markdown Specification: so when is it a good idea to throw theory out?
My astonished friend Nick forwarded me a PDF-ed version of the GitHub Flavored Markdown Specification. This is a version of the Common Markdown Specification with a small number of extensions. It came to 164 pages. You heard that right, 164 pages, for a spec for a small language. How could…
...Is XML only half finished? The X Refactor
The W3 Standard for XML is now 20 years old. I sent original of this post to the XML-DEV mail list suggesting a different vision for XML: reconstruct SGML’s power but as a definite pipeline of simpler stages, but without DTDs or SGML Declaration. (This version: 2018-02-13) Where is XML…
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