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Matthew Gertner wrote:
>
> [...] In a standards efforts that I am participating in, we had
> lengthy discussions about which schema language to use. Frankly,
> there was a lot of discontent about making XSD our official choice [...]
> RELAX NG was much preferred by those familar with it. [...]
> However, it is widely perceived as having lost the "marketing
> battle" with XSD, so people are relunctant to support it.
Adopting a technically less appropriate solution because
it's what you think everybody else is using sounds like an
unwise decision to me.
James Clark wrote:
>
> - There needs to be a tool to translate RELAX NG into DTDs and XSD. This
> would allow people to [...] interoperate with the rest of the
> XSD-using world. At the moment, choosing to use RELAX NG means
> choosing either (a) not to interoperate with DTD/XSD tools and users or (b)
> to maintain two schema versions by hand; it's not surprising in these
> circumstances that people don't choose RELAX NG.
I don't think this is nearly as important as people perceive
it to be. XML vocabularies that are defined by a RELAX NG
schema do *not* require applications to include a RELAX NG validator
at processing time, unless validation is specifically required as
part of the processing chain.
Using W3C XML Schemas has a much higher potential for causing
interoperability problems: if the semantics of a vocabulary
depends critically on the XSD-augmented Infoset, then XSD
validation becomes a requirement at runtime, and developers
are locked in to tools that support XSD.
The great innovation of SGML was requiring documents to define
their own type. The great innovation of XML was to remove this
requirement. Relying on the XSD PSVI would be a step backward.
Using RELAX NG is a step forward.
> - RELAX NG needs more evangelizing. I think for both Murata-san and myself
> it would be fair to say that our strengths are in the technical department
> more than the marketing department.
Don't underestimate the marketing potential of having
your name on the spec, James :-) (Murata-san too.)
--Joe English
jenglish@flightlab.com
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