xml-dev - Re: SGML, XML and SML

[Sean McGrath <digitome@iol.ie>]

>> [Dan Brickley]
>> >
>> >What goes around comes around! The RDF Interest Group [1] is currently
>> >discussing alternate syntaxes for RDF in XML. Sounds like we're being
>> >told we'd be better off returning to PICS-NGesque s-expressions.
>> [Sean McGrath]
>> Not so AFAIK. I would be interested to read the XML-DEV posts that
>> have lead you to this conclusion. Can you point me at them?
>
> [Dan Brickley]
>I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but the combination of Paul
>Prescod's msg (which I replied to) and previous SML advocacy seemed to
>be heading in this direction. In other words, that for many
>data-oriented applications, XML's document-oriented heritage makes it
>sometimes challenging to use. I'm far from convinced that a return to
>s-expressions, or the creation of a trivial subset (SML), would be
>useful right now. 

OK. I see where you are coming from. My position is this:-
1) SML must be allowed to be born so that it can either
die of natural causes or flourish. 
2) SML must be a subset (application profile) of XML.
3) To quote Henry Thompson (I think) "We should stop worrying
and learn to love xLink". By which I mean, a lot of
the thunkery that goes on with entities, notations,
PIs etc. might disappear in a puff of logic if only
we had xLink. The combination of SML with a rich
object linking mechanism is and idea that I feel
deserves its 15 minutes of flame:-)

regards,

<Sean uri="http://www.digitome.com/sean.html">
Developers Day co-Chair WWW9, April 2000, Amsterdam
<uri>http://www.www9.org</uri>
</Sean>



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