Re: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

[Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com>]

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:35:01 +0200, Michael Ludwig wrote:
> Browsers do not need to download anything they already have in
> a local cache. They could add the important DTDs here:
> 
> C:\temp :: dir "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd" /s /b
> C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd\mathml.dtd
> C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd\xhtml11.dtd
> 
> People just need to agree on what's important.

This seems to be an attitude common for the HTML-centered (is it 
appropriate to describe you so?); it seems to be the attitude of the 
WhatWG folks as well, so far as I'm understanding those bits that 
they've contributed to the namespaces discussion here, and that I've 
stumbled across otherwise.

It's an odd attitude, to my mind.  MathML, SVG, [pick-your-favorite] 
wouldn't exist unless the distributed authority mechanism (however 
clumsy, verbose, and annoying it is) of XML namespaces had not been 
available.  They relied on independent groups being able to build 
momentum, first in a niche, and then more widely, at which point the 
browser vendors acknowledged the justice of including them.

Even though this is the path travelled by all of the things that the 
HTML 5 folks are now including (well, apart from video: maybe instead 
of trying to work it out in committee, a distributed mechanism would 
lead to a solution there as well?), the working group seems to regard 
the idea of distributed authority antipathetically (or even to be 
forthrightly hostile to the idea).  That suggests that the interesting 
new technologies will grow up outside the browser, to be brought in to 
HTML 6, or HTML 7 ... meanwhile, XML 1 + namespaces will continue to 
resist a full-scale revision to XML 2 (or even 1.1, q.v.) ... because 
the distributed authority mechanism does *enough* to encourage 
innovation, and to allow flexibility ... even in the HTML space, via 
XHTML.  Is this driven by a desire to "control" something--innovation, 
flexibility, applications?

(Mind you, I'm not suggesting that XML is free of "we must control" 
attitudes; see, for instance, W3C XML Schema, in which the collection 
of primitive types are all you get, unless you can convince the Schema 
WG to add *your* favorite unrelated primitive datatype to the 
collection).

Amy!
(with apologies to Michael Ludwig; the thought's been percolating, and 
his comment simply triggered this note in response)