Re: XML Blueberry (non-ASCII name characters in Japan)

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

On 09 Jul 2001 10:56:33 -0400, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> At 3:17 PM +0900 7/9/01, Joel Rees wrote:
> >I'm not a guru, but I agree with Mr. Murata's post. UNICODE still needs to
> >evolve, and XML must also evolve.
> >
> 
> I think this is an incorrect presumption and is corrupting the discussion.

Corrupting the discussion?  I thought that was IBM's malign influence.

> The presumption must be that XML should not change.

While I spend a lot of time trying to prevent things which are piled on
top of XML (W3C XML Schema, XInclude, XML Base, even Namespaces) from
being considered "XML", I don't see any reason that XML itself must
remain fixed while the foundation on which it is built moves.

Unicode is the rock on which XML is built.  When the rock moves, XML
should move.

> It is incumbent on those 
> who wish it to change to produce good and solid reasons why it needs to change.

Foundations shifting is good enough reason to me.

> Absent compelling reasons, we should reject changes. Simply assuming that XML 
> must evolve and that therefore we might as well make these minor fixes that 
> will break compatibility is not acceptable.

Accepting this statement will make XML extremely brittle relative to the foundation it is built on.

> XML was specifically designed to 
> be stable on the order of thousands of years.

That's not a goal of XML 1.0, though it's a popular story:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-origin-goals

> There are good reasons to want 
> it to be.

Certainly.  But there's also a version number built into XML, suggesting that its creators were in fact looking ahead.

> It is disturbing to see that goal so casually discarded before the 
> debate even begins.

I don't think any one is discarding stability casually.  I think we may
have a difference of opinion regarding what constitutes stability.

Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com