Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 23:32:58 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu> Cc: ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ports status / category quandry Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.95.970115223234.264r-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95.970115222817.2239F-100000@baud.eng.umd.edu>
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On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Chuck Robey wrote: > On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, John Fieber wrote: > > A printing application might make use of SGML, but SGML is *not* > > a printing application by any stretch of the definition. It > > doesn't belong in printing any more than ispell or recode does. > > Very few of our applications *exactly* fit one category. Is there > anything else like sgml? Are you asking for a one-item category? Would Of course I'm aware that nothing fits exactly one category. That is what cross references are for. In my years working in libraries, and more recently as a doctoral student in library and information science, I have had the opportunity to look at a number of classification schemes in enough depth to have a reasonable grasp of how they work, or don't as the case may be. A basic property of all schemes is that they have gaping holes. While the ominous four volume set that comprises the Library of Congress Subject headings seems to cover just about everything when looked at casually, more careful scrutiny reveals some holes of mammoth proportions. (particularly for non-western topics and materials). A difference between classification schemes that work and those that don't is that the former are dynamic and grow to fill in the gaps. The process never ends because gaps pop up out of nowhere, for instance the entire field of computer science created a gap that had to be filled in the before mentioned LCSH. Back to tho topic at hand, I think that SP, and a number of other text processing tools currently classified as "misc" belong in what is currently just such a hole in our tiny ports classification scheme. Heck, many of the most commonly used unix tools--sed, grep, awk, wc, sort, and uniq to name just a few--are best classified as text processing tools. Of course they could all be used in the process of creating a printed document, but few people if any would classify them as "printing" tools in the way that, say, TeX is a printing tool. So no, I don't think SP is a category of one. > putting sgml in either print or misc be so misleading? The idea of Short answer: yes. If I'm looking for something to validate the syntax of my HTML files, how likely is it that I'm going to look behind Door Number One labeled "print"? Not likely. -john
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