RE: [emergency] FW: [legalxml-intjustice] GJXDM subset schema exa mple and documen tation

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Life among the mammals.  A piece of code is trivial 
to write in comparison to a legal document.  We tend 
to think in terms of contracts, standards, and specs. 
Sit down to write the by-laws for a corporation, define 
the entities, and check the number of cyclic graphs that 
emerge.  Yet where a computer will mostly just spin when 
it finds one, a mammal finds a one, names a loophole, 
and litigates a feature.

The man who originated most of what is today markup 
systems, now XML, is a lawyer.  That was a good thing. 
He said the first rule of standards writing is, 
"Conserve nouns."  Turns out to be the best advice 
I ever got for this business.

I'm waiting for the W3C to tell us that all of the 
new specifications require RDF ontologies.

len


From: Carl Reed [mailto:creed@opengis.org]

Claude -

Everything you state is definitely true in the GIS Industry!

Cheers

Carl