::scr Ramblings of a Classic Refugee or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love OS X

[David Cantrell]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 04:32:07PM +0000, Simon Wistow wrote:
> A common trap. You're forgetting that ASCII is a binary format, a
> sequence of 7bit numbers which happen to map to lookup table which
> describes how to draw that character.

If you say that plain ol' ASCII is not special*, you have a bootstrapping
problem.  If all files need to conform to a DTD-a-like, then the DTD-a-like
needs to conform too, and so does whatever describes that, and ...

At some point, you will need to say "enough!" and make arbitrary definitions.
You may as well stick with tried-and-tested convention and make plain ol'
ASCII special

* - or rather that nothing is special and that the whole system is
self-describing

-- 
David Cantrell | david@cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  "Dave, being Evil is no excuse for indenting like a moonshine-crazed lemur"
        -- Aaron Trevena