Re: Images & mouseovers

"Christopher Higgs" <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:


> There are some projects for which the time spent developing a DTD would be
> a waste of time (take the case of Kynn's resume).  In such cases adherence
> to a "strict" standard is ludicrous.  Why waste time reverse-engineering a
> DTD once he has decided what form to use?  The next time he updates it, he
> may want to add new sections which would then violate the previous DTD.

If he planned it properly to start with, his DTD would allow for new
sections. That's basic software engineering. Analyse your business
requirements and build a solution which matches it. A resume isn't very
complex. It shouldn't take too much effort to come up with a DTD that covers
everything a resume will ever need. And the extra time spent thinking about
the problem just might result in a better first attempt anyway.

> An analogous situation would be databases.  To you or I, we'd probably
> associate the term "database" with a fully functional relational database
> management system (akin to valid XML).
>
> However there are a large number of people out there to whom the term
> "database" represents one ginormous table of information, probably stored
> in Excel.  For this large group of people (the non-power users) the
concept
> of "well-formed" will be sufficient.

Yes, and have you ever tried to *do* anything with one of these monolithic,
legacy, almost-databases? It's mind-numbing. They are good for one small
narrowly-defined task. As soon as you have to use the information in a
different way (and believe me, you always do), your overheads become
untenable. If time was spent up-front analysing the information and properly
structuring it, the information becomes much more useable, much more
RE-usable, and generally much more valuable.

> For the record, I'm a fan of DTD's :-)

For the record, I'm a fan of XML :-)

--
David Meadows [ Technical Writer | Information Developer ]
DNRC Minister for Littorasy * david(at)heroes.force9.co.uk

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books
 are well written, or badly written. That is all."
  -- Oscar Wilde

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