RE: Just a Little Explanaton for Veering (RE: Blueberry/Unicode/ XML)

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

On 11 Jul 2001 19:45:27 -0400, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> FMI, has anyone seen a widely distributed XML application that crosses
> national and linguistic borders in which the element names are in any 
> language other than English? In every example I can think of, -- SVG,
> XHTML, Docbook, CDF, RSS, Schemas, WML, OFX, and many, many others --
> the element and attribute names are clearly derived from English, 
> never from French or German or Italian, much less non-Roman languages 
> like Russian, Greek, or Chinese. Can anyone think of a counterexample?
No, I haven't.  But I'm aware of many XML projects which don't cross
national borders and do use non-English markup.  I'm also aware of
developers who use localized markup which is then transformed to the
English markup immediately before transmission.

In any event, the assumption that XML is really about "widely
distributed applications that cross national and linguistic boundaries"
wouldn't stand up in my understanding of XML, except perhaps as a target
for scorn. I wouldn't pin too much hope on this line of argument.