data albania

[Rick Mascitti <acad!blitzen!rick>]

[nasty balkanization of data comment]

I have to agree with roger on this one.  Why is unix so great?
Why has the C language been so popular?  Because they provide
simple yet powerful abstractions that can be combined in ways
the authors hadn't intended.  (In fact, I think it was Brian
Kernighan who said ``A tool is useful when it is used for a
purpose the author hadn't imagined.'' or something like that.)

If the basic stuff can't hack something as trivial as HyperCard,
maybe we're building the wrong thing.  I happen to think that
the basic stuff can hack this and much more, and am willing to
lay odds that the performance difference between an inclusion-list
based HC and one that uses specialized doctypes won't be noticed.
If one extra indirection is so costly, then why are you gonna 
patent this magic?

rick