Before fragmenting, fix the broken bits first

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin Berjon [mailto:robin.berjon@expway.fr] 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 9:39 AM
> To: Dare Obasanjo
> Cc: XML Developers List
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Re: Where does the "nothing left but 
> toolkits" myth come from?
> 
> 
> The statement above mine is not the one you're quoting, I was 
> addressing:
> 
>  > This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You'd 
> think  > experience would have taught people the folly of 
> thinking 'we want the  > W3C to come up with the single 
> standard that wil solve all our  > problems'.
> from http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200502/msg00198.html
> 

and I was pointing out an example of the 'W3C to come up with the single

standard that wil solve all our problems' which you display in your next
paragraph below. 
 
> Now if what you meant to say is that the notion that there 
> should be one Web instead of a disjoint set of AOL-style 
> walled gardens is wrong then I'm unsure where to start 
> disagreeing, and also don't see the way in which such a goal 
> consitutes a "single standard that will solve all our problems".

Your comments above hint at the real problem. It seems you are equating
the notion of 'one Web' with a 'binary XML Web' which is why people like
ERH are against your efforts.

Instead of using domain specific technologies optimized for that target
domain, various parties want to usurp interoperable text-based XML with
some binary derivation of it. Sometimes I look at efforts like SOAP and
wonder if we wouldn't have all been better off if they hadn't picked
ASN.1 instead. Trying to satisfy the needs of a person editing business
documents with WordML and a developer building distributed applications
using similar toolkits has proven to be a problem no one has quite
figured how to truly solve.  I'd rather see the XML world solve the API
and toolkit problem first before further fragmenting itself into
text-based XML and binary XML. 

--
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
New systems generate new problems.   

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