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Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com> wrote:
| My main problem with [the AF approach] has always been that it involves
| processing that is not available to XML generically. [...] the best
| solution to this whole matter [might] have been to hypnotize the XML 1.0
| folks to add into XML 1.0 the ability to [re-map] elements and attributes.
XML 1.0 was essentially a baby-vs-bathwater exercise with ISO 8879. It
was also (in the minds of at least a few) a "first cut" effort, it being
known that outstanding problems with ISO 8879 would have to wait for at
least the (then as yet forthcoming) WebSGML TC. [To name just two issues
out of the many which in the event got deferred indefinitely: integration
of AFs and catalogs. To name two of many features in the TC which could
have made it into a "second cut" that W3C Process made impossible: the
#ALL keyword and the DATA declared value.] In short, there was nothing
fundamentally *innovative* about XML 1.0.
| This would make namespaces unnecessary, and add a *ton* of additional
| benefits.
Indeed, but it looks to me that the XML world is still deeply mired in
prejudices inherited from prior exposure to happy-go-taggy HTML. Tags[1]
still connote verbs to many, and to that extent there is a predisposition
favoring naming conventions that directly say what to do. This is the
thinking behind the urge to use "html:ul" for an unordered list in an
ostensibly FooML document. But naming by provenance rather than naming by
contextual purpose forgets a fundamental lesson of SGML: that it's all
about naming because names are instrumental. The lesson gets lost all too
often precisely because the ancillary mechanisms to fix associations are
so weak in ISO 8879.
| Anyway, maybe one way around the omission of remapping from XML 1.0 is to
| add another layer.
There's no getting around the need for a markup facility in the instance
document. (Because it isn't always an issue of "document types", and
having to add a separate layer for a one-off simply will not fly. One
basic point about AFs is that it's about how a document, not a document
type, maps to various document types - even where there's only one such
type involved!)
[1] See the first Q/A in Part 5 of Not the SGML FAQ:
http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt
|
