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Subject:RE: Giving up on XML From:Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:techwhirlers <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:23:08 -0400
Last Monday, Ned Bedinger was saying:
> But you're right, documentation has other uses for structure (as a
> template for information collection, as a visual cue to a document's
> organization, ...), and IMHO human consumers and writers of
> documentation do seem to prefer documentation that has not been fully
> elaborated with empty-but-logical structure. I think of XML as a system
> for describing information to computers.
Ahh. This doesn't apply only to actual Structured Documentation (TM);
it could happen in rigid company style-sheets as well, but...
Am I the only other person who, in brushes with structured/mandated
stuff, has encountered "empty-but-logical structure"??
Have you folks never been writing along, start a new section or
appendix, want to jump right into (say) a table, but find that
you need to create an intermediate heading (which must say pretty
much what the title of the section says, and pretty much what the
table title says, without duplicating the exact words... and
maybe you are also forced to insert a paragraph of made-up
bumph, only to satisfy the tagging system or the style guide
that says there MUST be a sentence between heading levels...
when you didn't really want to insert that made-up heading
in the first place... and like that?
If I'm _not_ alone in this, what do y'all normally do?
Appendix C: Supported Algorithms
Table C1: Supported Algorithms
# Algorithm
0x0031 DES-CBC
0x0032 DES... and so on for three pages
... but instead....
Appendix C: Supported Algorithms
ALGORITHMS SUPPORTED
This appendix lists the cryptographic algorithms supported by the crypto API
that is the only subject of this entire document, but we absolutely had to
have a sentence here, as well as that redundant section heading, just above.
Table C1: Supported Algorithms
# Algorithm
0x0031 DES-CBC
0x0032 DES... and so on for three pages
Kevin
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