xml-dev - Community help on W3C XML Schemas

[Rick JELLIFFE <ricko@geotempo.com>]

I would like to renew my call for people to make concrete suggestions on
improving the text of W3C XML Schemas. 

I am particularly interested in knowing the points at which people who
get lost or stymied or frustrated.  Are there terms that are not defined
sufficiently?  What would be a better way to organize it?  Are there
explanations which seem to increase the difficulty of understanding
rather than adding clarity? 

There have been some good comments and I am passing them on to the
committee of the Working Group that is looking at this issue.

In particular, I hope that anyone who has complained about there not
being enough community participation in XML Schemas can help us in this,
even though the more formal community/stakeholder process (Last Call) is
finished. Don't despair!


Rick Jelliffe
(writing privately)

P.S. I have been revising my article "XML Schemas in Context" recently,
for a publication. This is a comparison of DTDs and XML Schemas. I was
really pleased to find how substantial the improvement in W3C XML
Schemas' power have been since March's draft.  W3C XML Schemas
definitely supports DTD functionality pretty well now, and it is
substantially richer in its datatyping than it was. Apart from drafting
issues, I think the current approach is substantially better than that
of a year ago; I hope that users will agree, despite the wait.

(I do have an unease that replicating DTD functionality is a pretty sus
goal in the first place: supporting what people intend when they design
markup languages is a better one.  Otherwise we potentially end up
reconstructing DTD's limitations in a more elaborate form.)