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On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 14:01:15 -0800, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:
> Right now, the label "XML" implies a strong set of claims: a high degree
> of interoperability, good internationalization, lack of vendor lock-in,
> and good tool availability. Those claims are by & large based on streams
> of unicode characters with angle-brackets.
Well, with all respect, that's just not the reality I live much of my life
in. Web services are often implemented with synthetic infosets that are
only
serialized as XML at the very end of the road. The data retrieved by an
XQuery on a SQL DB may never be enclosed in an angle bracket
(AFAIK ... but if not it would also be at the very last moment!). As
Martin Gudgin says in the piece that Len quoted (disapprovingly?) http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-
us/dnxml/html/xmlinfoset.asp
"If a DOM tree sprouts, grows, withers and dies and is never serialized using
angle brackets" ... it *is* XML IMHO. There is more (or less) to t
he XML brand than the angle brackets, or else DOM, SOAP, XPath, and XQuery
(ahem, the W3C specs I have the most personal interest or involvement
with!) are not about "XML". There's an
awful lot of "XML" interoperability at the level of SAX events, DOM trees,
XPath or
XQuery queries, SOAP messages, etc.
> If you think you're bright enough to invent another interchange format that
> has a similar value proposition, go ahead and do it. I think it's a
> *much* harder problem than XML is aimed at, and it's going to be tough.
> If someone does this and it works, then probably it deserves its own
> brand name. It might even deserve to share XML's, but that's only after
> we have a lot more evidence than we do now that the goal is even
> achievable. -
Not me! I know it's a hard problem. I just know that people are being
driven
to think about it by real issues in XML parsing. My objective is very much
like
Tim's -- to maximize the value of the XML "brand name". That requires
careful
consideration of what is of the essence. I would not, for example, argue
that
ill-formed HTML-like syntax that gets cleaned/parsed into a form that a DOM program
can work with is "XML". That *would* be polluting the brand name!
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