A concern. Semantic mismatch and how to address it.

["Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

In terms of scope mainly.

If (big if) my assumptions on goals are approximately right.
And assuming some form of hub language / Esperanto into which and from
which all transforms occur.
And assuming XML semantically marked up inputs and outputs.


Concern.

How to avoid developing a markup language which is the Nirvana of
SGML, i.e. addresses
all needs in all scenarios.

It's been tried and failed so many times.

go as big as TEI.
go as specialised as docbook
go as re-usable as Dita.

The use case scenario would be some geek attempting to map 'my markup'
to hub markup
and always coming up with 'nearly matches' but not quite, what do I
do. I can see this happening even with a point to point? E.g. TEI to
docbook nearly matches etc.

The issue can be avoided by making the hub language the 'master', i.e.
the sender
determines what, from the hub language is the best match and defines the map.
Similarly the output transform specifies the hub to target map, knowing that it
won't be a perfect fit.

Would this provide real benefit?


regards



-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk