RE: [xml-dev] Announce: XML Schema, The W3C's Object-Oriented Des criptions for XML

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

No, it's not.  If we have to depend on putting on 
costumes and dumping good tea to get the attention of the 
king, then it really is time to dump the king too because 
a mature spec organization knows when it has launched 
a turkey.  Whatever the merits of James' analysis, 
it is about two years too late.

Berners-Lee approved it.  How loud a blast do you need 
to get the attention of a man whose home phone number is 
on your digital rolodex?  What is the lesson learned?

Let me ask: should we quit claiming to be creating 
standards and admit the role of specifications? That 
is, one implements a spec and assumes the risk that 
it may have flaws.  A standard, by contrast, should be 
relatively risk free because the implemented technologies 
and the communities that use them have uncovered them.

You can't have it both ways.

Maybe what we are really seeing here is not a tea 
dumping revolution, but just the beginning of a 
process to create a standard, meaning, DSDL is 
in the right place at the right time with the 
right people doing the right work.

len

From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> As Clark's message is being passed along working 
> groups like a grassfire, the assertions that XML Schema is 
> hard, incomplete, inadequate, somehow not right, are being 
> accepted uncritically in many venues based on the source.
> 
> That is not a good thing.

On the contrary, it's an unalloyed good thing.  We have moved from a 
situation in which nobody in the world had ever heard of any schema 
facility other than XSD to a situation in which we are having widespread 
and quite enlightening discussions about pros and cons and trade-offs 
and options.  This is a major win.

And yes, it needed a fairly large-caliber cannon blast to alert the 
world that there are some issues here.   Sometimes you have to dump tea 
in the harbor to launch a debate about taxation structure.  -Tim