From: Dave Long (dl@silcom.com)
Date: Tue Mar 21 2000 - 19:28:44 PST
> > above) it's impossible to programmatically (and reliably!) add structure
> > into documents that are lacking it.
rememberthatthereisquiteabitofstructureencodedbyimplicitmarkupalfredw
crosbyarguesinhisbookthemeasureofrealityquantificationandwesternsocie
tythatspacingandpunctuationwastakenuparoundthesametimeasdivisionintoc
hapterandverseoralphabetizedindices
Of course, bibles, plays, mysteries, and dictionaries all have
different conventions for their implicit markup; these differences
may lend some evidence to the notion they shouldn't be forced into
a procrustean markup structure.
Note that all of these documents have structure; they just lack
a structure with the consistency that little minds or powerful
machines adore or require.
> It would probably take me 15 minutes with Perl. I don't think anyone
> could do it in 15 minutes with COBOL; perhaps two days.
How about with SNOBOL or SPITBOL?
-Dave
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