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Uche,
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Certainly I agree wholeheartedly
with your points 1) and 2). At the same time, I am afraid that we are
confusing the fact that a whole array of specs from the W3C are unsatisfying
with the realities of what is needed for XML moving forward. I don't think
it is coincidence that the features that you postulate for "successful XML"
happen to be more or less the sum total of all the decent XML-related specs
to come out of the W3C. What, no linking? Is that because we don't need
linking, or because the linking spec is broken?
Of course, it's easy to say that "that's what developers are actually
using", but isn't that a self-fulfilling prophesy? If the spec is no good,
there's a good chance that people are not going to use it (at least not
successfully).
Matt
> -----Original Message-----
> From: uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com [mailto:uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 4:49 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: [xml-dev] Crystallization?
>
>
> I never was a fan of SML. I like XML 1.0 as it is, warts and
> all. But I
> think a variation of SML is in order these days. This past
> thread has helped
> me crystallize what lies behind my ambivalence towards the
> state of XML today:
>
> 1) The major foundations of XML are truly brilliant, its
> flaws being very
> modest for a technology of its age.
>
> 2) The second round of XML development through the W3C is confused,
> confusing, and counterproductive to the felicity of (1)
>
> My own definition of successful XML is as follows:
>
> - Basically all that makes up Tim Bray's XML Skunkworks document
> - XPath 1.0
> - XSLT 1.0 + EXSLT
>
> There are other successful vocabularies built on this
> foundation, such as SVG,
> but I'm mostly dwelling on the foundation.
>
> It is amazing what can be built using of XPath. I have been
> surprised over
> and over again at how well it strikes the balance between
> processing needs and
> simplicity.
>
> XSLT is a wonderful tool for generic XML processing, and its
> extension system
> allows a very clean layering between generic and application-specific
> processing. From what I have seen, one can optimize and solve other
> domain-specific problems through this layered approach just
> as well as if XSLT
> were a complete GP programming language.
>
> I'm not sure where all this leads. I know that many others
> have a similar
> view. Perhaps we just need to be sure that the best of XML
> is still properly
> represented in the user communities and the press even as the
> second, dubious
> wave washes ashore. I don't know whether this requires a Web
> site, an
> advocacy group, or what.
>
> But I do think I have a clearer picture of what is right and
> wrong about XML
> these days.
>
>
> --
> Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc.
> uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com http://fourthought.com
> http://4Suite.org http://uche.ogbuji.net
> Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston):
> http://www.xmlconference.com/
> RDF Query using Versa -
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-thi
> nk10/index.html
> WSDL and the Wild, Wild West - http://adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6004
> XML, The Model Driven Architecture, and RDF @ XML Europe -
> http://www.xmleurope.com/2002/kttrack.asp#themodel
>
>
>
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