xml-dev - Important XML announcements

[Jon.Bosak@eng.Sun.COM (Jon Bosak)]

In the bustle of XML-related conference and work group activities over
the last few weeks, it's possible that the world at large has received
insufficient notice of a couple of significant developments in the
realm of XML specifications in progress.  In order to make sure that
no one with an interest misses the news, therefore, please be aware of
the following:

1. Revisions of the working drafts relating to XML linking are
available to the public from the W3C web site at

   http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xlink
   http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xptr
   http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xlink-principles

These are the first publicly available updates to the work in progress
on XML linking in many months.  Note that the previous single working
draft has now been split up into two separate working drafts covering
linking mechanisms and addressing mechanisms and a note covering
design principles.

2. The first working draft of "Namespaces in XML" has just been made
available at

   http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xml-names

In order to meet urgent requirements from other W3C working groups,
the W3C XML WG intends to move the Namespace WD to the status of a
Proposed Recommendation as soon as possible.  The document is open to
public comment in the forums to which this message has been posted,
but please note the following points:

A. Implementation at this point is at your own risk.  As stated at the
beginning of the draft itself:

   This draft specification is a work in progress representing the
   current consensus of the W3C XML Working Group. This is a W3C
   Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested
   parties. Publication as a working draft does not imply endorsement
   by the W3C membership. While we do not anticipate substantial
   changes, we still caution that further changes are possible and
   therefore we recommend that only experimental software or software
   that can be easily field-upgraded be implemented to this
   specification at this time. The XML Working Group will not allow
   early implementation to constrain their ability to make changes to
   this specification prior to final release. This is a draft
   document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other
   documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite W3C Working
   Drafts as other than "work in progress".

B. The provisional status of the draft notwithstanding, it should be
noted that the urgent need for this specification on the part of
working groups in both the W3C and the IETF makes it extremely
unlikely that any changes to the draft beyond the repair of outright
errors will be made for the Proposed Recommendation of Version 1.0 of
the specification.

C. It is the current intention of the XML WG to attempt the promotion
of the Namespaces WD to Proposed Recommendation by the beginning of
May.  This allows just one month for public comment.

D. It will save a great deal of unnecessary bandwidth to understand
the circumstances under which Version 1.0 of the Namespaces draft has
been developed.  Given the extraordinary depth of the problem that the
specification begins to address, the importance of solving that
problem correctly, the lack of implementation experience in this area,
and the need for a quick first cut for use by activities depending on
the specification, the XML WG has taken it as a guiding principle to
specify just the absolute minimum needed to meet the immediate
requirements.  This means that a number of fairly obvious aspects of
naming that one would expect to be addressed in the specification have
quite deliberately been left unspecified for Version 1.0.  Thus,
comments pointing out the failure of Version 1.0 to address particular
features are in general unnecessary and will likely be ignored.
Persons wishing to make useful contributions to the public review of
the draft should confine their comments to pointing out broken places
in those mechanisms that the draft provides rather than suggesting
additional ones.

Jon Bosak
Chairman, W3C XML WG

P.S. Never send comments about XML specifications to me personally.  I
won't read them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Bosak, Online Information Technology Architect, Sun Microsystems
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