xml-dev - RE: More Stupid XML Articles

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

That's pretty much it, Dimitri.  Dvorak  
is in the camp that worry about what used 
to be referred to as the "balkanization of 
the web" and other oddities.  As we 
once said, "as soon as you say interactive, 
you say program", and it comes with a cost. 
XML is there to reduce complexity and cost 
and is does that comparatively well.

Actually, the hardest struggle I seem to 
be having with some locals is getting them 
to accept that in some situations the loosely coupled 
thin client is preferred and in others, 
tightly coupled fat clients are fine.  
These people argue to the extremes of 
exceptions as if one legitimate exception 
is enough to squelch the idea.   Frankly, 
these are folks who don't want one more 
thin mint on their fat plate.

We are paid to balance the exceptions 
in our designs, and to understand and 
explain that it is a balance based on load, 
local capabilities, issues of security, 
issues of lifecycle, and so on.  Unfortunately, 
we end up having to explain the means 
instead of the end because we are presented 
with alternative means that may not apply.

Telling people that XML is just a syntax 
is like telling people they can learn 
all they need to know about music by 
understanding one note completely.  It 
is true, but it turns out, there is a lot 
to understand about one note.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Dmitri Pavlenkov [mailto:dmitripavlenkov@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 10:33 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: More Stupid XML Articles


"elegant simplicity of HTML"? 
To me it looks when HTML is simple, it's not elegant,
and when it's elegant, it's not simple anymore! What,
and add to this different UA requirements, even among
desktop browsers, that becomes a greater mess.

"a simple informational Web site for themselves or
their families, or for a small business" 
I'm sure families and small businesses would
appreciate better viewing and more features, if they
could only get them :) I'd say they'll be very excited
when they visit even a simple SVG site. Which _is_
easy, simple, and elegant.

"XML is, in many ways, a vague standard insofar as
definitions of XML elements are concerned"
 can we seriously consider that? The author is
probably confusing definitions and interpretations.
After all XML is a language for writing languages. The
rules of writing XML are very strict, but there are no
restrictions on what you may write.

Ok, here's the whole paragraph:
"Just look at the recent recommendations by the W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium), which dominates Web
standards. The W3C has recently added XSLT and XPath
to the mix of XML-related standards to watch. XPath is
a FAT (file allocation table) applied to an XML
document. Great, now we need this kind of thing to
keep track of a page. XSLT means Extensible Stylesheet
Language Transformations. This amounts to a conversion
mechanism that is predefined so that various media can
adapt the XML Web page and view it exactly as it was
created on competing browsers. So instead of some
universal way to handle XML on different devices, you
can define your own custom ways to handle it."
I apologize for quoting the whole thing, but it seems
author here, while trying to point out disadvantages
of XML tools, managed to show us their great advantage
:)

"Nobody knows what to do about this." 
author is generalizing, I know what to do about this,
you probably know, too, he should have said: "I don't
know what to do about this."

Another paragraph (I just love it):
"John Simpson's seminar at Seybold was titled "XML
Q&A: Choosing an XML Parser." His description read:
"Validating or non-validating? Java-based, Perl, or C?
This month we tackle the tricky issue of which parser
to use for your XML applications." These are serious
programming concerns. This seminar marks the death of
simplicity."
Do users write programs? Do they really care what
parsers we use? All they need is the end result.

"As all this happens, the simple nature of the Web and
the Web's user-friendly character will be killed even
before we see the tenth anniversary of the first GUI
browser, which was released around 1993. "
I don't know when the first GUI broser was released,
but here are some points: How did interface change
since XML and co. came into scene? We still use
keyboard and mouse, touch screens etc. Do we have type
or click more? Now users can get custom presentation,
custom interface, custom interpretation, how
friendlier can you get?

This article is just another kind of bland slander
against something that author doesn't understand. His
position of HTML vs XML, has no relevance to the
situation. In most cases XML in combination with XSLT
is used to produce HTML. Where do you see the
competition? It looks like cooperation to me.


--- "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> Len 
> http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
> 
> Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
> Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h



=====
Dmitri Pavlenkov

ComputerAge Inc.
Ft. Myers, Florida, USA

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