xml-dev - Re: RELAX to ISO

[Murata Makoto <mura034@attglobal.net>]

Rick JELLIFFE wrote:

> Congratulations to Murata-san and the others involved.

Sam Hunting wrote:

> A strong second to this motion.

Thank you very much for your encouraging comments.

"Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...> wrote:

> I'm not 100% clear on ISO practice, but I think RELAX is on 
> track to become a Draft Technical Report, not a Standard, 
> at least for the moment.

RELAX Core is a Japanese Technical Report rather than a Japanese 
Industrial Standard.   Thus, it has been submitted as a type-3 
Draft Technical Report to ISO.  There will be a six-month ballot.  
If this ballot is positive, RELAX Core will become an ISO 
Technical Report.

RELAX Core borrows datatypes from XML Schema Part 2, which 
is merely a working draft of W3C.  As a result, RELAX cannot 
become a standard yet.  Since I believe that datatypes of RELAX 
should be aligned with XML Schema Part 2, there are no other 
choices.

Then, what is the point of submitting RELAX Core to ISO?  
This submission makes absolutely clear that RELAX is not a 
proprietary specification but rather a neutral & international 
specification.  That's all.

After all, the success of a specification cannot be guaranteed by
standard bodies.  Most standard orginzations have occasionally (or
often) created dead standards.  ISO cannot guarantee the success 
of RELAX.  (The same thing applies to W3C, more or less.)

A specification will survive only when it is widely implemented 
and adopted.  If you use it, it will come.  If you don't, 
it won't.  Stamps of standardization organizations are nice, 
but actually mean very little.  XML has been succesful 
not because it is a W3C spec but because it is a nice thing.

However, there are some reasons that RELAX may surivive. 
First, RELAX can be easilly implemented and some nice 
implementations are already available; second, migration 
from DTD to RELAX and from RELAX to XML Schema are kept easy; 
third, RELAX is not controlled by any private company.

Quite a few people participated in this thread.  This 
makes me happy.  I hope that more people read the 
tutorial "HOW TO RELAX" (http://www.xml.gr.jp/relax) 
and respond.

Rick JELLIFFE wrote:

> At this stage in the game, don't trust: try :-)

I agree.  In my humble opinion, most of the recently proposed 
specifications will eventually disappear.   Do not blindly believe 
any standardization organnizations or big players.  

Cheers,

Makoto
 
Internet: mura034@attglobal.net