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

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Although I wasn't a fan of minimization because it really is hard to eyeball
a very large file and fix it when it is minimized, and yes, I seldom used a
lot of the SGML features, the ones I did use were nice to have, and the ones
I didn't use, someone else was using.  OTOH, one would have to see just how
big some of those files were and how expensive memory was.  It's the issue
of making one size fit all when it only fits most.

I've said it before:  the victory of the web was not a technical victory of
better software, but of cheaper faster CPUs and memory plus the sudden
domination of the Microsoft desktop that made the other bits stable long
enough for the Internet to become commercial.  Otherwise, there are very few
bits contributed by the web that weren't already there in one form or
another.  The press and some mother-dumb VCs did the rest.  

And you know what, as soon as that generation hit their forties, it started
all over again.  Lots of money is going down the youTubes these days just as
as it did then.

That's the hilarious bit about a technical trade gone trendy: it becomes
generationally-challenged as well it should be.  About every ten years, take
all of the assumptions out, hang them on the clothes line and give them a
good whacking to see what falls out.

len


From: Paul Topping [mailto:pault@dessci.com] 

When one says that SGML has a lot of features, this can be a bit
misleading. AFAIK, most of SGML's "features" that XML lacks are things
that only really made sense if users were expected to actually type SGML
into a text editor --- things like tag minimization and the like. Also,
people were more concerned about how many bytes the files were on disk,
although this was probably dumb even in the early 80's in most
applications.

In short, SGML's extra features are just not worth their trouble any
more.

Paul Topping
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Len Bullard [mailto:cbullard@hiwaay.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:21 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Re: Recognizing the contribution of 
> the developers of XML
> 
> So the complaint is that SGML has a lot of features and 
> buying a fully-conforming system is expensive?  I can't 
> quarrel with that.  SGML systems were expensive and that was 
> the real barrier to its adoption, not its complexity.  Does 
> anyone really believe anymore that it was too complex or 
> merely too complex for a Desperate Perl Hacker?
> 
> SGMLS was free but it didn't do everything.  On the other 
> hand, what it did
> was useful so we incorporated into IADS for batch parsing.   
> XML doesn't do
> what everyone wants.  Should it?  What would it cost?   How 
> much would one
> have to spend to get a system like that?  Did the DePH vanish 
> as a species or was he/she always a golem used to scare the children?
> 
> I used some of the features of the SGML Declaration.  Can I 
> get that back too?  At what point should I punt XML away and 
> return to using SGML systems?
> Maybe there is a competitive edge for SGML vendors again.  It 
> seems to me that that alternative is better than a half-dozen 
> or so XML-wannabes competing for market share based on 
> features that only a small percentage of the developers would 
> use possibly adding to the overall incompatibility of the web 
> datasets.
> 
> Steve Newcomb once referred to XML as an SGML Onramp.  One wonders.
> 
> Curmudgeonly yours,
> 
> len
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: peter murray-rust [mailto:pm286@cam.ac.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 5:03 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org; h.rzepa@imperial.ac.uk
> Subject: [xml-dev] Re: Recognizing the contribution of the 
> developers of XML
> 
> At 07:07 29/08/2006, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> >peter murray-rust wrote:
> >>Remember also that XML was a direct descendant of SGML. SGML was 
> >>typical first version system - over-ambitious and (I believe) never 
> >>fully implemented in a single piece of software.
> >There are two optional features in SGML that were not implemented by 
> >the dominant parsers (OmniMark, SP, SGMLS) which were DATATAG and 
> >CONCUR. IIRC there were private systems that used them 
> however. (E.g. 
> >TEI has CONCUR YES.)
> 
> I didn't mean to imply that there weren't good compliant 
> implementations of SGML :-) merely that AFAIK there was no   (widely 
> available) system that did everything in one package. And in 
> my position - academic or self employed the only reasonable 
> option was (n)sgmls.  I *was* interested in CONCUR and I 
> didn't find it possible to find a system on which I could 
> develop my ideas. Perhaps that is a blessing.
> 
> >To say that SGML was never fully implemented assumes that 
> the spec was 
> >written with that assumption.
> 
> I didn't say that :-) ... I am aware that all parts of the 
> SGML spec were implemented *somewhere* but that one might 
> have to buy two implementations to have a complete range of 
> functionality.
> 
> >On the contrary, the provision of optional features with clear 
> >conformance levels shows otherwise. That James Clark or Sam 
> Willmott or 
> >whoever decided not to implement a certain optional part of 
> SGML shows 
> >it is good to have optional parts not enormous monolithic 
> standards. So 
> >I am not aware of any part of ISO 8879 that was not implemented 
> >somewhere.
> 
> 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?
> 
> >P.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics University 
> of Cambridge, Lensfield Road,  Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
> 
> 
>