Raskin book on UI and radical data thoughts

[Chris Pressey]

On Wed, 02 Apr 2003 19:02:02 -0800
Jay Nelson <jay@REDACTED> wrote:

> Chris Pressey wrote:
> >So, while I'll give him due credit for the terms he's coined, and
> >while he seems to have the best of intentions, I think I'm a bit
> >nonplussed by Mr. Raskin's actual ideas.
> 
> I would agree, but might still want to read to hear his
> arguments.  Often they spur other ideas.

Yes.  Guru-types do tend to write enthralling books, even if you don't
agree with everything (or even anything) they have to say...

> >There are basically two reasons for why data interchange is in such a
> >sorry state.
> 
> Agreed.  There is no incentive on the part of software *sellers*
> to make this easy.  Open source software should want compatibility
> however.  Isn't XML supposed to fix all this anyway? ;-)

I expressed a similar sentiment about 6 months ago re: format of source
code :)

The last time XML came up on this list, some of the posts were very
illuminating - for instance, that programmers tend to use XML as a
transport layer only - they underuse the data structuring/typing
facilities (I forget what they're called...)

Could be the feeling that there'll always be "just one more field" that
could be added, so no document type is ever "completely complete."  Same
sort of dilemma I've been trying to put into words for a while...
standards are something you have to settle on, and a lot of people
rightly don't want to settle! :)

> >I think we already have these: journalling file systems?
> 
> The user never sees it and the versioning isn't available.  Or rather,
> I know my Linux recovers faster now but I have no idea how it
> works.  Maybe I need to read up on the file system and see how
> to expose the timestamps and versioning.
> 
> jay

Researching the topic a tiny bit with Google, it seems to have a lot to
do with the definition of the word "journalling" in the minds of the
people who design the journalling file system.  It would be neat to see
something a bit more explicit (a bit like CVS or a wiki, perhaps,) where
you could select an object and select "revert to" and pick a date.

-Chris