xml-dev - RE: Who will maintain SAX?

[Bill dehOra <wdehora@cromwellmedia.co.uk>]

>"Instead of just getting incomplete standards that lead to product
>incompatibilities between vendors in the same category, we're 
>now moving to
>a situation where standards are potentially incompatible across diverse
>product categories which absolutely need to work together.
>The good news is that tolerance for this kind of nonsense in 
>the business
>community is starting to drop. "

When it comes down to it, I'm more concerned about the ever growing wad of
standards surrounding XML than putting processing APIs into a standards
track. XML is meant to be robust to processor "choice" surely? You can
process XML with Jacquard looms if you want, so long as its standards are
being used correctly. 


>This suggests to me that the diversity that has served us well 
>to foster
>innovation in the
>area of XML APIs -- SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, Trax, etc. -- works against
>getting XML taken seriously in the IT shops of the world.

I don't think there is a problem with XML being taken seriously, but point
taken for SAX. 


>it as a "ding in sich" (thing in itself?)

Yes. But it's "ding an sich" apparently. Apologies to philosophers
everywhere.


>SOME credible standards organization ought to try to pull all 
>this together.
>Ideally (IMHO) it would be the W3C -- for all its faults, it has a
>reasonable combination of competence, credibility, openness, and
>flexibility. On the other hand, the other DOM people (I'm one of them)
>haven't seen the integration of SAX, XPath, XSLT, etc. into 
>the DOM API as a
>priority, and the SAX people have not asked, so perhaps 
>there's not much
>point in pursuing that option.

Like I say, they don't want to get caught up in APIs.


>Is the objective of a single, platform neutral and vendor neutral XML API
>suite unrealistic? 

Vendor neutral internet time is best achieved outside any formal body. The
benign dictator model is still the most succesful for creating de facto
standards. 


>Or is there some way that the choice of a SAX maintainer
>can move us toward that objective?

I second David Brownell's nomination: can I do that? :-).


-Bill de hÓra