[uf-discuss] Format-of-Formats?

[fantasai]

Tantek Çelik wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> The perceived value that you see is exactly why this whole topic is such a
> massive trap. 
> 
> It is very seductive (especially to programmers) to think that you can
> define a format for formats (a meta-format shall we say), *once*, then
> implement *only that*, then have every specific format magically work.
> 
> In practice, this never[*] happens.

I'll agree with that but defining the syntactic constraints on a format
is a useful exercise.

> In the spirit of "don't reinvent what you can re-use", anyone seriously
> desiring to work on a format-of-formats should *first* teach themselves DTD,
> and XML Schema *at a minimum*, before having the arrogance to think they can
> do better.

RelaxNG does a lot better.

~fantasai