> That's right. That's why people get so confused about them. The word
> inheritance is inherently misleading when applied to architectural
> forms.
Paul is absolutely right, but I'm still not going to take his advice.
For several months last year, I deliberately stopped using the
word "inherit", as in "inheriting architecture", "inherited-from
architecture", etc. Instead, I very carefully used the words
"derived" for the inheriting architecture and "enabling" for the
inherited architecture. This is the vocabulary used in the standard.
Ultimately, however, I reluctantly gave up on precision vocabulary
because nobody understood what I was talking about, except for people
whom I had no need to reach because they already understood the
concepts. In almost all rhetorical situations, I have to use
vocabulary that may be, strictly speaking, misleading, and yet
provides some glimmer of understanding to the HyTime-inexperienced.
I'm back to "inherited" and "inheriting", and I never even try to use
"enabling" and "derived" any more. I'm open to other suggestions,
though. Got any?
-Steve
-- Steven R. Newcomb, President, TechnoTeacher, Inc. srn@techno.com http://www.techno.com ftp.techno.comvoice: +1 972 231 4098 (at ISOGEN: +1 214 953 0004 x137) fax +1 972 994 0087 (at ISOGEN: +1 214 953 3152)
3615 Tanner Lane Richardson, Texas 75082-2618 USA
xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)