Re: Tim Bray on XML hits and misses

[Edd Dumbill <edd@usefulinc.com>]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 04:32:50PM -0400, Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote:
> "Misses" include vertical industry vocabularies, "intelligent" document
> authoring (most XML docs are created with Word or Frame), and the Semantic
> Web.

I attended that session, here's some background on it which illuminates
that other post.

Tim's "misses" were not the things he thought were disasters, rather
more those that he felt could reap the best advantage from XML but that
had *yet* failed to emerge.

Actually, Tim gave a lot more attention to talking about these three
than most other things he mentioned.  I think he overlooked the success
of some existing vertical vocabularies, but what he was calling a miss
was the idea that these were going to be a widespread success--clearly a
lot of folk just do things ad-hoc with good results.

Likewise, XML authoring, the state of which we all lament.  And as for
the Semantic Web, Tim actually expressed a good deal of belief in it,
but gave it something more like 10 years to come to fruition.  He urged
the audience if they were "young and energetic" to throw themselves to
working on the SW, as he said there'd be a "lot of money" to be made
there ultimately.

-- Edd