Sometimes microblogging questions require macroblogging answers. Here’s the conversation: @arh: Did @hixie really call XML a “disaster”? Is #techcomm aware of this? http://html5doctor.com/interview-with-ian-hickson-html-editor/ @mbakeranalecta: @arh XML is a disaster. Bad implementation of an essential concept. So is QWERTY. So it goes. @arh: @mbakeranalecta Generally agreed. What concerns me are the #techcomm folks who think XHTML… Read More »
In The Tyranny of the Terrible Troika, I complained that the now almost universal trio of concept, task, and reference did not properly represent what topic-based writing and information typing are really about, and I promised to show why each one, as popularly practiced, fails as both a topic type and as an information type.… Read More »
One of the more unexpected characteristics of Every Page is Page One topics, is that they tend to conform to a type. We tend to think of topic typing as something specific to structured writing, something that is not natural to how we write, but something that is imposed on content for the sake of… Read More »
As I have argued previously, Every Page is Page One is the new fact of information seeking behavior. Whether a reader finds information by searching, or by surfing links on other pages, or even by browsing the landing page of a website, the page they arrive at is page one for them. And when they… Read More »
Search is somewhat like an airplane. If you go to a meeting in another city, the plane takes you most of the way. But the plane only takes you to the airport. The meeting is somewhere downtown. You need some other means of transport to take you the last mile to your meeting. I wrote… Read More »
My daughter use to eat pizza one ingredient at a time. She would patiently sit and take her slice apart, making separate piles of pepperoni, green peppers, olives, cheese, and crust. She would then eat each ingredient in turn. I am reminded of the bizarre (and short-lived) practice when I see how many people do… Read More »