xml-dev - RE: power uses of XML vs. simple uses of XML

[Ashvil <ashvil@i3connect.net>]

> From: Gavin Thomas Nicol
> > > What kind of application can handle this?
> >
> > IE5.0 and Office 2000 allow this with HTML, VML and your
> own custom
> > markup.
>
> Very specific kind of application.

Considering that most people spend most of their time in Office 2000,
IE5 and (Mozilla in the future, hopefully). Also, both Microsoft
(Universal Canvas) and Mozilla folks are moving to a universal
rendering/editing system, where users would spend most of their
interaction time, I would hesitate to label that as a special case ;-)


> Namespaces are convenient *for some things*, but a lot of usages are
> gratuitous.

There is always a chance for misuse of a specification. If the
namespace concept is so bad, then it will die on it own.

I like the way that I can use HTML tags, VML tags and my own custom
markup in IE5 without resorting to data islands, MIME based URLs, or
passing data to EMBED tags, ActiveX Controls, Java applets, etc.

For example. Try to use SVG in IE5 via the way Adobe has it right now
(via passing data to the plug-in approach) and compare that to the way
VML is integrated via a rendering processor and namespaces. I cannot
believe that anyone will choose the Adobe approach for integration.
(This is not to knock down Adobe implementation of the SVG draft.
That's great. I only wish they had chosen the MS integration
approach.)

Regards,
Ashvil