Re: breaking up?

[Guy Murphy <guy-murphy@easynet.co.uk>]

Hiya.

While I agree with you in principle, I have a concern...

Who oversees and administers such a fragmentation?

Also keep in mind that fragmenting some parts (potentialy useful parts) away
from the core will efeectively mean their demise where these parts are among
teh trickiest to impliment.... I think we saw this quite clearly when XSL
[for good reason] was split into XSLT and XSL:FO... the XSL:FO was doomed to
die in this split, almost regardless of its merit.

Also, simply by way of exploring your proposal, not seeking to be
argumentative, how would you propose to fragment things more than they
already are where xml schema, transformation, querying etc. are already
discrete specs?

It is still posible to have a simple XML parser with no validation support,
and none of the new fangled flashing lights... how might you propose things
would be simpler?

Maybe the W3C needs simply to be clearer [in its marketing] with what is an
optional flashing light, and what is mandated or strongly encouraged for
adoption by implimenters?

We have a really Good Thing(tm) with our ability to communicate data in a
common format, it's easy to forget how it was before... are we going to tear
the tower down ourselves and go back to speaking in a babel?

I'm a big fan of simplicity over complexity, but normaly before the item
under consideration is set in stone. After the fact one tends to leave lots
of fracture marks.... not opposing your suggestions, simply saying that at
this juncture one would need to be very careful how one went about it, and I
have reservations that the resulting split wouldn't introduce more problems
that we already have.

Cheers
    Guy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 3:59 PM
Subject: breaking up?


> After going away for a few days and catching up on messages, it seems like
there's a fairly clear divide in this community, one which shows no signs of
abating.
>
> On one side - including myself - are those who were attracted to XML by
its initial promise of a reasonably simple text-based markup system which
would let people get their work done with a minimum of arcana.
>
> On the other side seem to be people who find the results of XML 1.0
interesting but not nearly good enough by themselves.  These folks seem
intent on decorating XML with a number of features - Namespaces, W3C XML
Schema, XInclude, etc. - which add to XML's capabilities at some cost in its
clarity.
>
> Maybe it's time for these two groups to go their separate ways.  XML 1.0
itself, in my view, already gave the 'decorators' too many features, and
we've been cursed with odd warning labels (think external subsets) ever
since.
>
> Maybe we should look at XML 1.0 as a shared foundation, but not expect XML
itself to be a solution.  It's a starting point, both for people who want
less and people who want more, a compromise that worked very well for a time
but can't last forever.
>
> I know that there are those who want XML kept as monolithic as possible, a
shared set of tools which can be applied neatly in every situation.  The
tools we have, however, aren't monolithic, aren't even necessarily
interoperable, and give different groups of people very different problems.
>
> I think markup would survive such a fragmentations, and survive usefully.
It already does.
>
> Simon St.Laurent
>
>
>
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