Re: why hierarchy?

JOG wrote:
> Another cracking quote on XML from C. M. SPERBERG-MCQUEEN ( a member of
> the technical staff of the World Wide Web Consortium)
>
> "In the wild (that is, in documents, reports, and program
> data structures as they are encountered in daily life),
> information takes forms rather different from third normal
> form."
>
> Yup, that's right, "information takes forms rather different from third
> normal form". Don't worry about the fact that third normal form is just
> a way of rearranging true propositions in a lossless way. No siree,
> because that would make it _totally_ different information. Good grief,
> how does this stuff get published.

Nice.

I especially like the fool's notions that:

1. information has a "natural" form
2. there's a "wild" in which information "lives"
3. "program data structures" are... well, something-or-other
4. reports are "data structures"

• erk