xml-dev - Not so stupid (was re: More Stupid XML Articles)

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Bullard, Claude L (Len) writes:

 > http://news.excite.com/news/zd/001004/10/killing-the
 > 
 > This one will be believed because of the source.  
 > He doesn't even know when GUI browsers really first 
 > appeared.

Our fault, not his.  

When XML came out 2 and a half years ago, XML's promoters (W3C and
otherwise) made a Faustian bargain -- promote XML as the
next-generation of HTML (which is plainly misleading, but very
interesting) rather as than a low-level layer for serializing tree
structures in clear text (which is accurate, but boring as hell).

The HTML and Web angle gave (and still give) us a lot of positive
media exposure, but we have to pay for it sooner or later.  Every
writer cannot be an XML specialist, and we can hardly blame them --
even someone as well-known as Dvorak -- for throwing some of the
misleading information back in our faces.

I mean, let's be realistic -- was anyone going to start building a new
Web with XML and XSL stylesheets, when designers cannot even get their
minds around HTML+CSS?  If my mother wants to put up a Web page for
her church, is she going to bother with XML (unless her HTML editor
happens to write XHTML without her knowledge)?  Were merchants really
going to start posting their catalogues in XML just so that customers
could use intelligent search engines to find that someone else sells
the same blue jeans for $10 less?

We've done a lot of interesting, useful, and productive things with
XML on the server side, but they don't generally make good press.  On
the client side, Dvorak is right to complain about "XML islands" and
similar nonsense in some of the newer browsers -- after all, we
complain about them all the time on XML-Dev.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/