According to Joshua Pritikin:
On Sun, 25 Oct 1998 chip(_at_)perlsupport(_dot_)com wrote:
Um, I've been manipulating content and metadata with Perl for over a
decade. So that conclusion *was* tempered by experience.
But that's backwards! When I look at perl, I see that much is
generic and also quite a few short-cuts. The interesting part is
deciding what is important enough to earn a short-cut or CORE-level
hook. The ?? operator is a good example: _it_evolved_.
I think you're reading too much into this discussion. We're just
batting around ideas of what we'd like to see. Even if an early Topaz
release includes some of these things, that doesn't mean they won't
evolve based on implementation issues and further experience; nothing
is set even in quicksand.
... when you declare "meta-data must be separate from text", it
seems to me like you are skipping steps whether you have 10 years of
experience or not.
You can't wait for the long form of evolution in all cases. Sometimes
you must -- again to ref Star Trek IV -- "take a guess", based on a
combination of experience and intuition. (Whose intuition? Take a
guess. :-))
XML is coming on strong, and it makes sense for us to take a stab at a
facility to ease metadata manipulation. If it turns out not to help,
or to be too much work to implement in the first place, then we'll give
up on that approach and look for alternatives.
Yet never allow doubt to delay action.
Yes, you too can have an aphorism for any occasion!
I wasn't just being cute. :-(
I didn't see how you could be serious. "Never allowing doubt to delay
action" is a good way to get killed.
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. -
<chip(_at_)perlsupport(_dot_)com>
"... under cover of afternoon in the biggest car in the county?!" //MST3K
