Re: [xml-dev] RE: Why is there little usage of XML on the 'visible Web'? because XML has not gratefull degradation.

[Tei <oscar.vives@gmail.com>]

On 7/20/06, juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com
<juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com> wrote:
> After reading some really strange replies i would add that not everyone
> knows that not everyone know about Paris.
>
> I wonder how many of that people is designing the next semantic (XML) web.
>

I program a quake game engine (telejano.berlios.de). This game engine
able mods (new games) with this engine. By design decision I recover
from all errors (as posible), the other options is to crash with any
error. I, as engine coder, will care about errors, and my users are
programmers, but my users users are people playing a game. People
playing a game will get angry if the game crash because a resource
file is invalid. EVEN if this resource file is XML. So we need
gratefull degradation. A XML file can define a menu, if the file is
corrupt, the menu will not show, but the game will not crash. And a
error mensaje will be at stderr (well...the game console ).
I guest other engine programmers will feel that this is the right
decision (Gecko, Microsoft HTML render engine, etc).  But XML, by
design, has not gratefull degradation. My old movile phone show a
ERROR 501 (???) if load a invalid xml WML file. So.. its maybe a bad
idea to send text/xml to the client, because any error => bad error.
As a engine coder myself I guest HTML fit better than XML for the
visible web.

I also program remote XUL applications with PHP (here I am the user of
a engine, Gecko). Because my users will use spanish, and I am a poor
programer, a PHP code mystake may break my application (XUL will not
like this solitary &) . So the app will stop with a ugly error.  From
a intelectual POV, I like XML that way: Your code is invalid, your
application will break. But not everyone live IT because love IT and
intelectual questions. So XML will be like ugly for some tipe of
people ( >99% of the world ), the people that hate ugly errors, and
compiler warnings, etc.

Example: Warnings are very good for compilers user, but will confuse
the hell of final users. ( John Sixpack read a alert box with message
"The buffer has been reread withouth new content, this can mean a
offset overflow or repeated ticket", his head roll... and die ).


Conclusion:
Why is there little usage of XML on the 'visible Web'?
Gratefull degradation is good for final users. And is bad, evil and
greedy for programmers. XML has not gratefull degradation by design.
So its not good for final users = visible web.