RE: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

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

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:39:51 +0100, Michael Kay wrote:
>> (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).
> 
> XML Schema 1.1 permits vendor-defined data types, and if the vendors choose
> to provide mechanisms for defining them, user-defined data types. Saxon 9.2
> makes a small start with facilities that allow you to define your own
> lexical representations of existing types, e.g. 1,234 for integers, on|off
> for booleans, or 25/8/2009 for dates.

Mea maxima culpa.  My first draft included "1.0"; I rewrote the 
sentence for clarity, and lost specificity.

I will ... refrain from going off on the W3C XML type collection.  I 
have an argument on that score, but it needs a specification and an 
implementation, and my time is so far not my own that only the 
specification is completed, at present.

> Of course, such things only become really useful when the mechanisms for
> defining the extensions are standardised across products: but I'm a great
> believer in the principle of providing extensibility first, and then
> standardising the extensions (or preferably, the extensibility mechanisms)
> that prove popular. It's like waiting to see where people want to walk
> before you lay the footpaths.

Agreed.  I think this is a good analogy for how MathML and SVG were 
able to achieve such prominence as they have.  My argument, in the 
message to which yours responds, was to the effect that I thought HTML 
ought to also have such an extensibility mechanism (if it were 
algorithmically transformable to XML namespaces, all the better).

Amy!