On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 06:22:13PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 03:25:48PM +0300, Richard Braakman wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 12:39:04AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > > > > Yet we do routinely apply the DFSG to interpreted scripts where there > > > > is *no* differentiation between source code and compiled form. > > > > > > Not really; it's just that the compiled form is often transient. > > > > How is this different from documentation? Most people don't read > > HTML or SGML directly, they use an interpreter. > > The difference being that HTML or SGML *can* be read reasonably easy > without an interpreter. While I will accept that there may be people who > are able to read a compiled binary by doing something like 'cat > /usr/bin/foo', I suspect that most people on this planet are not able to > do so. The same is not true for HTML or SGML.
Are you attempting to suggest that sgml approximates to a *compiled* form? I would compare it to the source code. I am quite capable of reading the source of most programs without using an interpreter (compiler), and predicting what it will do. (In fact, given the halting problem, I can do it _better_ by hand than I could with a compiler). > > > But anyway, documentation is not source code. That is my main quibble. > > > > It looks like source code, smells like source code, and behaves like > > source code. > > Yeah, but its purpose isn't the same as source code. Without justification, this assertion is invalid. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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