xml-dev - Re: King of Stupid XML Articles?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 12:27 PM 9/25/00 -0700, Lisa Rein wrote:
>Well the list includes technical inaccuracies such as this:
>
>"(ICE and RDF are overlapping attempts to describe
>                      types of Internet-accessible data)"
>
>ICE is an XML-based syndication format.  RDF is an abstract model for
>representing relationships between web-based resources.  Not even
>closely related -- although they may be used together in the future.  To
>say that they are overlapping attempts at doing the same thing (as if
>they were both failing somehow or were redundant in nature) and to use
>this faulty comparison as an example of why xml "won't work", is unfair
>to new people trying to learn, and just plain irresponsible from a
>journalistic standpoint.

I'd call this a weak example, not a 'dead wrong' - I've heard a fair number
of people wishing that ICE had a more RDF-like foundation.  (Those
criticisms come up for a fair number of XML-based specs, actually.)  I'd
rather he'd used RSS vs. CDF, or any of the conflicting vertical market
possibilities, but I can't say I find this to be wildly irresponsible
journalism.

(There were a bunch of tutorials early on that used <xml> for the XML
declaration, and there are still a lot of strange claims made about
namespaces, URIs, and various other XML parts that strike me as a lot more
irresponsible.)

>most of these "stupid articles" just needed a fact check before they
>went to press.  i always fact checked my articles, even when there used
>to be only about 200 people in the world capable of providing it. Now
>there are at least 2,000 -- so i say "no excuses".

I'd have put a warning RDF vs. ICE, not a fatal error, personally.  I get
the feeling that you're irritated by seeing claims that XML isn't perfect,
and looking for nits to attack the author's credibility.

>anyway, when i have time this week, i will list the inaccuracies and
>email them to those of you that have asked. there are many more of them,
>and i do already have them documented, but i need to weed out the
>insulting commentary and stick to the facts (for everyone's sake :-)

I'll look forward to that.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books