Re: [xml-dev] XML support in browsers?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

Liam Quin wrote:
> In general, if you define a social construct in terms of technologies,
> you're going to become obsolete...

Sure - communities come and go.  That's just normal.  These particular 
technologies have demonstrated wide reach and staying power, however, 
and I think it's safe to say that they do in fact provide the technical 
foundations of the Web community today.

(And it may be worth noting that WaSP used to include XML 1.0 among 
those core technologies, but dropped it.)

> The Web is the set of things that we can name with a URI... 

That would be the W3C's perspective, but I don't think anyone here wants 
to reopen the infinite spiral down the "what can we name with a URI 
rathole."  At least I hope not!

> not
> the set of things any particular Web browser can view, nor the
> current set of popular scripting or styling mechanisms.  Ten
> years ago, "font" and "size" elements (or "tags" more properly,
> in fact, as they didn't need to balance) were used for styling
> on the Web, but even though the predominant styling mechanism
> has changed, we still call it the Web.

Sure - it evolves.  But for most humans, the Web is defined by "things I 
can see through a Web browser", with varying degrees of clarity about 
other ways to see and use the same information.

> I don't actually believe there's a single "Web community" but
> rather an awful lot of communities who use the Web alongside
> one another.  

And you can say that of any given community - there's always diversity. 
  I suspect, however, that the lack of interest shown here for a "Web 
community" has more to do with its general lack of interest in XML than 
with the particulars of its internal divisions.  Pointing to trees to 
claim there isn't a forest there but only individual trees clustered 
together isn't very useful, however.

> Nor does there have to be a single set of
> technologies used by everyone.  The needs of the many do not
> in fact outweigh the needs of the few.

And fortunately for the Web, the needs of a few XSL-evangelists didn't 
outweigh the needs of the many already working with more approachable 
technologies.  The XSL folks continue, of course, but the early drive 
toward the Web fell back.

> If we had native XSL-FO support in browsers we'd for sure want
> the client-side XSLT...

Ah, but we don't.  Despite the best efforts of the W3C to say that XSL 
was meant for the Web, reality, manifested as the pretty much complete 
lack of interest of the target community, which I'll persist in calling 
"the Web community", intervened.  Browser vendors likely had their own 
reasons not to pursue it, but lack of broad interest probably was a factor.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/