Re: XHTML (was: Chelume)

John:
> 4) Make sure all start-tags and end-tags are properly nested.
How does this work when there are multiple independent
overlapping hierarchies? To take a simple example, suppose
that changes of font, roman/italic toggling, and switching
boldface on and off are noncoincident. (I remember this
issue coming up back in 1990 or so, when I was designing
a mark-up scheme for a project, and I was being urged to
make it SGML-conformant: I resisted, on the grounds that
the restriction to a single markup hierarchy necessitated
an unwarranted misrepresentation of the intrinsic structure
of the information the markup was designed to encode. After
I left the project it got -- as you might expect -- far
kludgier, and I believe my mark-up got perverted into more
tractable, and less meaningful, XML-conformant form.)

ObConlang: the issue of multiple independent overlapping
hierarchies affects the conlanger too: for example,
predicate-argument structure, quantifier-variable
structure, discourse-semantic structure (topic, focus,
etc.), quotation, scope of metalinguistic comment,
presupposition, etc. may all overlap, and finding some
coherent and harmonious way to integrate them all is,
I suppose, the major challenge of inventing a syntax.

--And.

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