Master Foo on structured documents

"All our documents have at least one author. That is always true, surely?"

"There might be no authors at all! It depends on where the document is
in the workflow. Sometimes there is no author until the last minute."

"Actually, come to think of it, we have purposely published documents
without an author in the past."

"Ah, not really. It depends on how you look at it. A document with an
author field that just happens to be empty or a document with no author field."

"You are just splitting hairs."

"No I'm not. There is an important difference!"

"What about where we put the author information? Sometimes we need to
put author information after the publication date, sometimes after. We have
always had a mix in our published documents. How will we support that?"

"I don't see how we can capture everything we need about how that 200
page landscape table is formatted. We don't have enough layout control."

"If we used SGML rather than XML, some of our problems would be easier
to solve."

"No. What we really need is to dump XML XSD and go back to DTD.
We never should have listened to that content management consultant."

"You are both wrong! Relax NG is obviously the way to go..."

"What we need to do is get management to pay for top-of-the-range authoring
tools. That will solve our problems."

Sitting on front of Master Foo, using some of the poorest attempts at relaxed
seating positions Master Foo had ever seen, were four highly animated employees
of a manufacturing company from the valley below Pentimenti Mountain. To attract
their attention - and stop the cacophony that was at this stage beginning to
disturb the Koi in the fishpond - Master Foo tapped his green tea cup with a
USB key.

"Gentlemen", he began, raising both palms to face his visitors,

"Please can you slow down and speak one at a time? My poor old ears are
not what they used to be and my ability to follow N simultaneous dialogs is
not what it used to be."

The din subsided.

"All I have heard in the last five minutes is the four of you uttering
the phrase 'controlled vocabulary' over and over again. You do not seem to be
getting anywhere. Which, presumably, is the reason for this visit?"

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