Re: ZDNet Schema article,and hiding complexity withinuser-friendlyproducts

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Murali Mani wrote:
> 
> Last mail for the day --
> 
> I think Michael Champion is more correct than Eric -- 

I would prefer so since my statement is pretty pessimistic.

> we *trust* the WGs
> to come up with correct technology, as a not very experienced person, I
> also tend to trust big corporations like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, but i
> think the experience with XML schema is making me doubt the big
> corporations to some extent. 

I don't. 

I trust big corporations to come with "reasonable" solutions that are
useable, but most of the real innovations are coming from small
structures --that will eventually become big corporations if they can
surf on their invention.

Big corporations have usually too much legacy to protect to afford
paradigm shifts.

This is likely to be the case with W3C at this stage of its history!
 
This is remaining me of a sentence from Jim Mason heard during a
reception at KT 2001 in Austin:

"I was impatient with ISO and thought we needed someone to compete with.
Now I think the W3C needs someone to compete with."

> I have the highest regard for tim berners lee, who had made the web possible.

Sure, but can he afford investigating the details of each specification?

Studying W3C XML Schema is a full time job...
 
> I am glad with the merger of RELAX and TREX, it makes the solution adopted
> by RELAX/TREX stronger, it also focusses development on one specification,
> also personally it gives me hope of correct research -- I am sure
> RELAX/TREX will survive the marketing strategies from XML Schema, whatever
> be their individial market shares.

I wonder if I have been clear enough. 

The success of W3C XML Schema isn't something I wish (but who cares
about what I wish), but something I see as 99.99% predictable.

And, given this predictable success, I see 2 useful course of actions
and I am trying to follow both paths:

1) To develop alternative schema languages that we can used for our own
purpose and that may inspire future releases of W3C XML Schema.

(I am a member of the TREX OASIS TC, following the schematron and Relax
mailing lists and author of examplotron [1].)

2) To find the best ways to use W3C XML Schema with its defects.

(I have written a W3C XML Schema tutorial published in English on
XML.com [2] and in French on XMLfr.org [3] and I am involved in other
complementary projects.)

Eric

[1] http://examplotron.org
[2] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/11/29/schemas/part1.html
[3] http://xmlfr.org/documentations/tutoriels/001218-0001

> cheers - murali.
> 
-- 
See you in Hong Kong for www10:
                     http://www.www10.org/program/w10-half-tut.shtml#ta5
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
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