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On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 02:38:16PM -0500, DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO) wrote:
> I didn't mean to imply that anyone was trying to change XML itself, only the
> "all" part of "all XML files" by enabling XML encodings that are not
> considered text.
I see. "text" is very subjective, though.
> I never really thought of the binary XML efforts as a way
> to simply define one more encoding to use, but that does make sense.
>
> Is it possible to define such an encoding, though, while leaving Appendix F
> of the XML Rec. (non-normative as it may be) alone?
I've no real idea if it can be done _usefully_. We (W3C) are in
the process of deciding whether to start a new Working Group to try
to explore whether it can be done usefully or not, and what are the
costs, whether those costs are justified by specific benefits.
That Working Group isn't about to define a format, though, but
only to report back on whether it's a good idea.
If it *is* a good idea, or if it seems a good enough idea to try,
maybe in a year to 18 months we'd create a Working Group to define
a format for efficient interchange of XML. But that isn't the same
as a "binary XML" -- instead, it's a way of sharing the same XML we
all know and love.
If we don't do that work, it's clear others will, and possibly not
in a Royalty-Free or unencumbered framework, and possibly without
consensus of use cases and requirements, so that we'll get multiple
proprietary binary interchange formats. Maybe we'll get that
anyway, I don't know.
For what it's worth, though, I can assure you that none of us at
the W3C are into changing XML for the sake of changing it -- you
can see how long it took us to get to XML 1.1, and there were
some very compelling use cases for those changes.
Liam
--
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
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