Implications for Markup Usage

Markup as an active process Working toward this separation of content from markup has forced me to take a closer look at how we use markup. Instead of a document as an agglomeration of labeled bits, I now see a sequence of text annotated with extra information. Markup is a process and a practice, an intervention.
The poverty of attributes has meaning From this perspective, attributes are limited because they are only containers for information about another container. Suddenly, the rules files I'd written using attributes for data look poorly thought-out, and the use of attribute values where element names would be more appropriate makes me cringe.
Highlighting the limitations of hierarchy Ool is an opportunity to explore beyond the conventional limits, but a little use highlights the strength of those limits in conventional work. For some applications, notably annotation, Ool is downright exhilirating (the punch of XPointer without the complications), but in most cases it's a lot of extra work for results that other approaches to breaking hierarchies might solve better.
Some hacks are good hacks Embedded markup is clearly not perfect, but a little time with parallel markup makes clear how many shortcuts it permits.