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   RE: [xml-dev] strange feeling

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That's a little unfair, Arjun.  We signed on to 
a W3C effort.  It did get the bit between 
it's teeth, but no one had to shanghai it. 
 
But the names I saw there and the names I was 
familiar with by work experience and the pubs 
were pretty much the same group.  The leadership 
was different and so were some of the goals. 
We have probably spent a lot of anguished emails 
debating the goals.

All in all, I am not displeased with the results. 
I do think we are now a long ways past that initial 
slimming down of the syntax spec (the easy part, 
really), and pretty far into the framework weeds 
that made SGML just as tendentious.  The biggest 
difference is that where once only a fairly small 
group of people understood the issues and could
architect for them sensibly, a much larger group 
has a grasp of the issues if not always the history 
of previous attempts to solve them.   Reinvention 
is certain, but as long as folks like yourself 
who have both a deep technical grasp and familiarity 
with the number of solutions proposed, tried, and 
sometimes discarded while awaiting new requirements, 
it seems to work.

The big problem was the W3C going from specs to 
standards making, thus projecting a perception that 
things mostly proposed were really done and to be 
accepted as fiat.  That restricts innovation even 
by regurgitation.   Experience says the simplest 
approach with the clearest documentation will win 
the day if not the decade.

But a day in the library is still worth a month 
in the lab.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Arjun Ray [mailto:aray@nyct.net]

"Didier PH Martin" <martind@netfolder.com> wrote:

| And yes, [the W3C] simplified SGML.

No, the W3C did not simplify SGML.  SGML was simplified by the SGML
comuunity.  As Len once said, "every SGMLer with a modem."

The W3C shanghaied the result.
 




 

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