On 2002.06.12, Sean Russell <ser / germane-software.com> wrote: > james / rubyxml.com wrote: > > Larry Wall once said that systems should be generous in what they accept, > > and strict in what they emit. > > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/larry.html > > With all due respect to Larry, this is simply not a responsible philosophy > in many problem domains. [...] > > "Oops. Sorry about that. There was a missing <zipcode> tag in the order, > so when the wrecking crew saw 'Hudson St.', they assumed it was NORTH > Hudson St., and your house looked kinda shoddy to them anyway..." While I totally agree with Sean, I think Sean missed James's point. I would enjoy an XML parser and XML validator that allowed me to parse an XML document that failed to validate so that I could try and figure out (programmatically) what caused it to fail so that I could present the human-user an intelligible error message, rather than a simple "Sorry, your XML document failed to validate." but rather show things like "Node <zipcode> in the node <address> for <person name="Sean E. Russell"> was missing." I don't know if this was really James's point after all, but I guess this is what I'd want to say ... > Remember, .001% of a year is 8 hours... how much would you mind having > a day's pay taken out of your paycheck? Ouch! Stop that! Who are you, the IRS?! :-) -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy / panoptic.com Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)