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

[Marcus Carr <mrc@allette.com.au>]

Paul Tchistopolskii wrote:

> When W3C wil tell the truth? I mean that XML is
> for developers, not for users. ;-) Oh.. sorry ...

It must be the first day of duck season over there - the shotties seem to be going off in all
directions now...:-)

By user, do you mean someone who fills in a form online or browses the web? If so, of course
XML is for developers. My major complaint about XML when it first arrived was that from an
SGML perspective, I didn't believe that fragmenting a complex standard was going to result in
a nett reduction in complexity; this seems to have been proven to be true. Nonetheless,
breaking it down has allowed much more flexibility in the way we put it back together, and
that has proved to be a winner.

If by user you mean small groups creating web sites for their family reunion or breed of dog,
what's wrong with them continuing to use HTML? We used to generate sites out of SGML data,
but nobody ever felt sorry for people hand-coding HTML then, so what's changed? (We sometimes
laughed at them, but never felt sorry...)

If the XML family wasn't complicated, it probably wouldn't be very useful either. Although I
find it hard to keep the bits and pieces that I know straight in my mind, I'm overall pretty
satisfied with the result.

> Right! Let's be realistic! XML is for developers ( who will be writing
> that HTML Editor, for example ).

And internal combustion engines are for mechanics, but that won't make me carry my clubs to
the golf course.


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein