[humanmarkup-comment] Introduction

[Henrik Brameus <henrik@brameus.com>]

Hello,

As a new participant on this list I thought I'd introduce myself (following
Ranjeeth's recommendation)

Interests:
==========
I am interested in the human communication (especially written) in the
modern computerised age, especially the extension of the normal language to
show belonging to a group (like h4Ck3Rz do) or emotional value (e.g.
smilies).

Background:
===========
I have worked with personal computers since the late 1970's, and made a
living from them since the late 1980's. I'm very much a computer generalist,
with a background in industries like desktop publishing, multimedia and
voice recording, and positions as technical support,
localization/internationalization, testing and consultancy. The last few
years I've been using my technical knowledge to help new high-tech companies
to be started. I am also involved in other organisations, like IEEE and

Desired Contribution:
=====================
I see myself very much trying to keep the work on a simple level with happy
shouts as "keep it simple" and "don't worry, be crappy". A lot of the
success of XML is based on that it didn't try to do everything for everyone,
but left the future open by extensibility.

Direction for Human Markup:
===========================
The way I would like HM to go is to help people to handle the ever
increasing information flow by making it easier to machine process
information handling like email. I had a conversation in February with
Randall Schwartz (of Perl fame) that it would be great if you could mark up
an email with different roles. For example, if I got an email today where
some of the information was sent to me in my professional capacity, some of
it to me as a person, and some of it to me as a movie enthusiast that would
be easy for me to deal with when I got it, but more difficult in the future
if I try to find the information.

What we came up with was an idea where you could publish which role you have
(eg. as an XSL) and then use email filtering to extract information from
emails, so that if I am on holiday, or even have left the company, the
profeassional information could be forwarded to the appropriate person,
while the personal information would be kept for me, or forwarded to an
alternative email address.

In other words, I see something that should be easy to implement, preferably
transparent to non-compliant applications, and extensible for the future.

Anyway, I think that will have to do for now.

Henrik Brameus