November 03, 2005

Dear Microsoft WinFX SDK Development Team / Dev-Lead | An Extension By Example To My "No More Mr. Nice Fence Post Sitter" Post

First, to the Dev-Lead of this project > Just a couple quick questions:

- Are you a Woman?
- If yes, are you single?
- If yes, will you marry me?

[If more info is needed]

I am:

6'2" Tall
Dark Brown Hair
Dark Brown Eyes
Athletic Build based on an Athletic Lifestyle
I was once refered to as a "Good-looking Perry Farrell" but (see picture below of Perry Farrell) I'm not so sure that is as much a compliment and more a "damn that boy is ugly... even ol' M. over there's better looking than him:

Here's Perry:

The best picture of myself that comes even close to the same "Perry Pose" [note: I believe this is actually me watching my pool partner knock down the eight ball for the V. But it could have been of me dancing and turning to see if someone was using the pool table as well... I do very much like to dance, I do. So it really could have been either. ;)]

Could Perry and I be twins separated at birth. Ummm... I guess I'll let you decide that one for yourself ;) I must admit I am a big Janes Addiction fan, so I guess there is the very real possibility its more than just the fact that Janes Addiction Kicks A$$, musically speaking of course.

Likely? Ummm... no. Possible? I think we can scratch that "very real possibility" bit from above, cuz' Ummmm... no. ;)

I do know one thing though for sure... That man is a flat-out Rock-Star like none-other... and you just gotta love Janes Addiction... I mean, Janes Addiction defined an entire generation of music that no one really seems to recognize... I assure you, if there was never Janes Addiction, there would have never been a grunge scene, alternative music would still hold true to its "alternative" roots -- believe it or not Alternative didn't used to mean Main Stream Music USA... It meant, "if theres nothing else on, I guess there's always this as an alternative." [update: Actually, this is more a tounge-in-cheek way of stating what the first sentence on the Wikipedia "Alternative Rock/Music" entry more accurately defines as:

The terms alternative rock and alternative music[1] were coined in the early 1980s to describe punk rock-inspired music genres which didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the time.

Believe it.

Going back to our previous "marrital" conversation...

Now if it had been said that I look a lot like a better looking Brad Pitt[1]... Now that could probably qualify as a compliment. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to admit that such a comparison/statement has never been made on my behalf...

Does this present a problem? I mean theres always surgery so I'm sure we can work something out, right? I promise, I can change! :D

So moving on... just what in the hell's got me all twitterpated over the 50% chance the MS WinFX SDK Dev-Team lead is a Woman, with another 50% chance she's single. Now I have no idea what the percentage of interest would be in my marriage proposal, but based on my own extensive experience through long-term, direct exposure since birth[3] with the 50% Estrogen-based population I'm 99.100% certain that my chances would have been a lot higher if I had waited until say after our 2nd year of dating to propose marriage...

What are the chances now? Zero.

DAMN!

Anyway, this is why:

DAMN You're Gorgeous! Add to this all of the "living, breathing, interactive-based capabilities that seem to be just where they need to be and appear just when you need to use them... I'm sorry, but this stuff just flat out ROCKS!

If you havent already played around with latest release of the WinFX SDK or any of the other fine examples of where the future of document/documentation development is most certainly moving towards [note: there are several dependencies that are listed that you must install first before installing the SDK] you really need to.

Or is the future is now?

If the above is representative of the way things are going to be from here on out, I would then respond "Youre Damn Skippy!"

I'm ready. Are you?

Now, just in case you have absolutely no clue how this is related to my DOM/COM/compound document post from two days ago, I'll give you a hint...

This is a compound document. Or in other words a document-based application.

Please, if your running Windows XP and have a good hour or so of time... go get yourself immersed in the Vista site. In particular the Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon) particulars who's core is the XML-based declaritive-style Windows GUI and Component/Object-based Wiring Framework which goes by the name, XAML and is a perfect example of the exact format I was refering to as where I believe we need to be focused from this point forward.

Now, before you go off and state "Yeah, but then I'm tied to Microsoft" [See Answer 1 below]

or

"If MS came up with this its only to get us locked into another proprietary format and as such, is a bad idea all together." [See Answer 2 below]

or (and here's my favorite lame-a$$ statement of all time)

"If its so great, why are they the only ones doing it?" Quick Survey : Did you state (in your head, or out loud, either one) after reading that last question "yeah, why are they the only ones using this component-based document format?" my simple answer would be [See Answer 3 below as well]:

---
"Oh, I'm sorry... this is XSLTBlog... you must have thought you found "EcstasyBlog". If you head down the hall its just two doors down and just to your right... no your other right.. there you go.

"Damn dude, why's your back all crooked like that... you couldnt be more than 25 years old there phreaky... And, just a thought, but you might want to consider laying off the coffee for the rest of the morning... usually when your hands begin to violenty shake such that you can't even get the cup in your mouth, you've generally capped out on youre daily caffeine intake 'limit'. Just a thought, though. I'm sure you know your limits much better than I do, for sure..."

Which of course would have been followed with the inner thought of the "scared raccoon eyed" whatever that was with "Coffee, all I've had to drink all day is Orange Juice... Chhh... Coffee... Who needs coffee when you've got -- Owe! My back! Damn that hurts..." which if you have any idea what I have just been refering to in these last three(3) paragraphs you know is exactly the problem in and of itself.

[NOTE: The following is a very serious statement. Please treat it as such, and if you have a problem, please get help]

I can promise you from experience (while short lived, even short lived was too long) -- you need to lay off that shit. You're going to be crippled, miserable, and dead by 30. Seriously, you don't what you're putting in your body... its BAD ASS FUCKED UP SHIT! STOP NOW!

Please.

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Answers to above questions:

[Answer 1 : No. You're not]

[Answer 2 : See the same links from that last answer]

[Answer 3 : Ever heard of Mozilla? Firefox? How about XUL? Or better yet, Sea Monkey? If you don't already know this, while the implementations are different, these are all focused towards the same general compound document format... I promise, Compound Documents are exactly where things are... not headed... they're here now and you more than likely use an "application" built with this generalized concept each and every day of your life and don't even realize it.

Dont get me wrong.. theres still a ways to go for things to be where they need to be. But if don't start learning this now, you're going to feel a little silly in six months when you're 14 year old brother is writing better, faster, more reliable, and more extensible code, that he is now using to collaborate with his new found friends in "China, Russia, and Australia... oh, and some kid down the street who insists on calling himself "The Worm." The Worm? What kind of an idiot would WANT to call himself "The Worm". What a dork!" [which you barely even heard as you realized a few seconds prior to this that the "nice gentleman" who helped you out in the dev-forum in whom you assumed must have been developing code for at least twenty years and yet was nice enough to help you work through some bugs in your E4X script you've been working on for the last six(6) weeks is you're same 14 year old brother... You know this of course because the similar comment "The Worm" was here earlier, just feel lucky you did'nt have him trying to help you as you would have been worse off that when you started by the time he was through with you..." which was followed by "What a dork!" which you though was kind of wierd for a middle-aged hacker to be stating and as such you're now dead certain came from the same person... you're 14 year old little brother.

"Uh, oh... ya think he knows I'm "The Worm"?!"

I'm guessing if he doesn't, he'll learn how to find out who "this worm guy is anyway" by next week at his present pace of code absorption.

You see the sad thing is that he only started "writing code" two weeks ago when he decided it was time to buckle down and learn how to make all these cool document-based applications that everyone seems to have and is "moddin' up to give them some personal style and class, yo."

Or something like that anyway... :)

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Closing things off... Don't get me wrong.. its not too late now, nor will it ever be too late to start learning about XUL, XAML, and SVG. Don't get me wrong... XHTML and CSS are EXTREMELY important to learn and understand, especially in regards XUL and SVG as both of these specifications are heavily integrated into these specifications. HTML, XHTML and CSS still make up 95%, if not more, of the web documents out there, and they won't be going away. Adapting yes. Going away, no. Not for a LOOOONNNNNNGGG time, if ever. Not everyting has to be a compound document to be effective. Besides, the W3C is working on integration of Compound Documents into their list of recommended specifications as we speak. Obviously the W3C is going to be concerned with keeping things as compatible with prior document versions as possible, so again, expect to see these languages continue to play a major role in our web-based document future.

To embrace compound documents you dont have to dump the current DOM-based formats, and instead simply need to learn how the very fact that these formats are XML-based is the exact reason why compound documents are called compound documents...[err... that didn't come out right. Compound Documents don't have to be XML-based to be considered a Compound Document. But the fact that anything that is XML-based inherits the eXtensible capabilities of XML makes things MUCH easier from the standpoint of ensuring any XML-parser can parse the entire document, no matter if the process used to take things to the next level will know what to do with it once it has. Of course namespaces are at the same level of importance as far as XML-based Compound Documents are concerned as it is with namespaces we can be assured that we can use whatever naming conventions/derived XML Schema we so please without having concern as to whether or not someone else is using the same naming conventions/derived XML Schema. The parser will correctly differentiate the two and allow the ability for whatever process is used to determine what gets processed by what rendering engine/component/application/etc... Mime-Types come into play with this process as well, but from the XML parsing standpoint its namespaces that are of the utmost importance for any given XML-based Compound Document. Without them there would be no XML-based Compound Documents. We can barely agree on a handful of standards that are driven by a handful of industry leaders. Can you imagine everyone on the planet attempting to collaborate to both agree upon and ensure that clashing of XML-dcouments didn't take place. In fact, with that stated, XML would have never gained any extended traction had it not been for namespaces, even with Compund Documents out of the equation. The moral of the story... if you don't already, might be a good idea to learn all you could possible ever want to know about these beasts of burden. Need someone to help? From a consulting standpoint go to the main page of this site and pick a name/company from any of those on the "recommended" list, buy one of Jeni Tennison's books, if your tecnically savvy, one of Dr. Kay's titles will get you where you want to be, and so will one of Elliotte Rusty Harold's titles. I'll have to check to see if Kurt has tackled namespaces in one of his titles. If he has, the this too would be an excellent source to learn about XML namespaces. If none-of-these come across as anything of interest then I would consider prayer (and LOTS of it) - or - if you don't believe in any sort of Higher Being, you might consider looking into such matters a bit deeper as to truly understand namespaces you either need the help of God Himself(or however you view the Diety) or as close to Him (or, again, however you choose to view the Diety) as you can get on Earth (at least in regards to the depth of understanding all that is XML namespaces is concerned) which is basically the list of folks on the main page or any of the above books that they have written.] they're compounded/integrated with other XML-based, CSS-styled elements all over the place that are then integrated with other XML-based markup languages that embrace a COM-based wiring mechanism to bring these same documents we've been developing for years together with the incredible power and capability that comes with the COM-based development models while embracing simplicity and paying no respect to giving up anything as far as capability and extensibility are concerned.

Killer stuff for sure! Just like that beauty of an SDK documentation sitting up there in all its compound document glory...

Ain't life grand :)

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[1] or as some might say "I'm sorry, but thats simply not possible" to which I would counter, "No I'm not one of them." I assure you, I can state with absolute and total confidence and certainty that Women are most definitely my cup of tea... And Mmmmm, Mmmmmmm, Mmmmmmmmmmmm do I love that particular variety of the "spice-of-life."

[2] : And no, I'm not afraid to express my true emotions either... If you don't already know, fear of expressing emotion is not something I would consider a "problem". If anyting it would be my tendency to express too much emotion thats the problem.[3]

[3] : Yet another side effect of growing up with five(5) wonderful and lovely sisters such that I have been forever blessed in sharing my life with (trust me, this line stopped working about that same time I said it for the first time... or in other words.. it never worked. But it does tend to get them all feisty which can be fun sometimes.. so I continue to throw it in from time to time such that I can get some variety in my days that are lacking such quality.