Re: [xml-dev] Re: Recognizing the contribution of the developers of XML

[Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Aug 29, 2006, at 12:03, peter murray-rust wrote:
> I am also keen on levels of compliance in design and am trying to  
> implement this in CML when possible. I think XML made a reasonably  
> good decision about what was optional (e.g. validating parsers).  
> MathML also has different levels of compliance. Are there other XML  
> specs which have major compliance levels?

Yes, SVG has Tiny and Full (and used to have Basic in between), XHTML  
has several profiles, etc.. However it is increasingly frowned upon  
(often with good reason, but not always) as it does seriously get in  
the way of interoperability, which one tends to hope would be the  
bread and butter of standards. My personal feeling is that the  
current tendency is to try to balance feature coverage with  
interoperability at least as well as XML did (and if possible better)  
rather than be ultra-strict in unifying a standard (and fail to meet  
some needs) or be over-open in accepting features (and fail to  
provide interoperability). I don't think I'll shock anyone in saying  
that it's generally insanely hard, no matter how much one tries to  
learn from previous examples.

-- 
Robin Berjon
    Senior Research Scientist
    Expway, http://expway.com/