intertwined specs

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

After writing about the new XSLT and XPath requirements documents, plus the 
latest in query, I'm getting kind of concerned by how deeply intertwined 
all of these specs seem to be getting, and how intertwined with Schemas 
they're becoming.

XSLT 2.0 processors will need an understanding of XML Schema datatypes, 
while XPath 2.0 processors will need to implement the regular expression 
language specified in XML Schemas.  XQuery builds on all of these, using 
the strategy pioneered by Quilt.  The current draft of XML Schemas requires 
schema processors to understand XPath as well.

Once, long ago, I wanted the W3C to make sure its specs coordinated and 
made some kind of coherent sense.  That never really happened, but now we 
seem to moving toward a jungle of intertwined specs, with complexity 
increasing despite/because of reuse.

Anyone else find this unnerving?
Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books