RE: [xml-dev] Has XML run its course?

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

In a sense, this was inevitable.  By forcing SGML 
and almost every other data language of note 
to the sidelines, by setting up an addressing system 
that ties all information to the systemic definitions, 
by insisting to the world that one group has a 
"moral" hegemony  for Internet content and the 
specification of the systems by which it is 
obtained, the webHeads got the focus they were 
after.   Now they can't live in the spotlight.

What does that mean?  It means that almost 
every effort to use hypermedia theory and develop 
hypermedia applications became focused on exactly 
one medium, one organization, and to the eternal 
consternation of the markup specialists, one 
subset of SGML.   All of the decades of research, 
researchers and resources are trying to pour themselves 
into one mold through one spec.  Meanwhile, Berners-Lee 
and some of the core W3C architecture experts are 
squeezing out a backdoor called the Semantic Web 
with RDF, Notation 3, etc. leaving all the refugees 
they created behind in the somewhat squalid situation 
you have now.

All of this, and Simon wants to blame SGML, others 
want to blame the committees, and so it goes.  Yet 
this is a self-inflicted disease, a gold fever.   Like 
the California Gold Rush, at the end, a lot more 
people live in California, but few with substantial 
assets except those smart enough to begin to farm, 
to build and sustain cities, to pick up the ungolden 
rocks and build homes and walls, to make sturdy businesses.   

The smart people won't abandon XML.  They will take 
XML Schemas and learn to use them like a farmer builds a 
stone wall and marks grazing land from the vegetable 
garden.   Others will use XSLT to make meals of the 
produce and the meat.  Some, unable to stand the 
enclosures of the commons will go looking for 
more adventure and some ideal of freedom elsewhere. 
In the end, most will have most of what they want, 
but a few will go to their graves cursing the farmers, 
cursing the bankers and yearning for the good old 
days when they could sling a tag-stacking HTML parser 
over their backs and go huntin' grizz.

Jeremiah Johnson died in an old folks home with some 
great stories to tell.  Some of his companions didn't 
make that far.  Others died in very nice mansions also 
with great stories to tell but surrounded by the walls 
they made of the rocks they found after the gold rush.

Be careful what you wish for.

len