Blog split in Blogspot

My new Modelling blog Modelwise will now carry Modelling related opinions, while this blog will now be have only more personal miscellany.

XML Lessons from C

[damn! hit the back button by mistake... 5 paras with links gone]

Summary: In the 80s C was still the "everything's an integer" programming language. Factors like 16 bit architectures & portability led everyone writing "good" code to dispense with int, and use short, long, signed & unsigned, function pointers, and in general strong typing with no hidden agreements between caller and callee.

The XML parallel is that in its early days (right up to now) the addition of elements into XML documents as piggy-back over and above what the receiever expected as mandatory was considered a strength. However, with increasing use of XML Schema, and generated XML documents (and their schemas) from other models, as well as document transformation and translation outside of XML, it seems that more and more strong typing will come to apply in XML as well.

However, if things are done well, as suggested in this article, then the benefits of extensibility can be enjoyed as well as evolution and versioning.

Speculation and Innovation

My friend from Birmingham, Graeme Rose, emailed me the other day to say he's coming to a conference in Brisbane: Speculation and Innovation.

It'll be great to see him again; we met in 1991 when I was living in Birmingham, and I've managed to catch up every 3 or 4 years when I've been in England. I've been lucky enough to catch a couple of his theatre projects while I've been there. Some of which are through Stans Cafe, and others with other companies.

The conference has piqued my interest, as it seems really diverse, multidisciplinary, and interesting. The programme page was unfinished when I last looked, but there's an accepted abstracts link which gives you some idea.

A number of Timbomb's UTS colleagues will be there, and Anna Gerber, recently departed from DSTC :-(, is now doing her PhD at one of the sponsoring organisations Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID).