RE: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

["Jim Tivy" <jimt@bluestream.com>]

Your comment:
XML has no effective conditional text system.

DITA is an XML compliant markup language which has conditional text
processing.  Why does conditional text processing have to be built into XML
(the extensible thingy).

-----Original Message-----
From: rjelliffe@allette.com.au [mailto:rjelliffe@allette.com.au] 
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 10:03 PM
To: XML Developers List
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

> On Aug 23, 2009, at 4:27 PM, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>
>> Were we starting over today, I would argue strongly in favor of
>> eliminating the internal DTD subset entirely and leaving the
>> definition of the schema language outside the spec so that the DOCTYPE
>> could point to schemas in different languages which parser vendors
>> would be free to implement or not as they chose.
>
> Agreed, and I'd go further; I'd totally eliminate <!DOCTYPE>.
> Frankly, I have no interest in an instance's opinion about which
> schemas it thinks are relevant.  The nice thing about XML is I, the
> receiver, decide how best to validate or otherwise process.  -T

And maybe it is deeper than that too.

Is XML turning into an experiment in seeing how far you can go while
completely eschewing versioning issues? There is no tomorrow. XML has a
version number, but it cannot be used. XML has no effective conditional
text system. Namespaces have no versioning system. Schemas have no
versioning system. We have no system for saying "this namespace is a
subset of that namespace (therefore applications written to accept that
namespace can handle this one, with the appropriate URI change".)

XML does not have the infrastructure to support the large, evolving,
mission-critical applications (including office applications) well. This
is caused by the fixation that the mechanics of sending a file from A to B
is the only issue to consider: that behind the scenes issues are better
left to proprietary and individual efforts.

So the DTD idea that real life is so chaotic you better have a custom
setting for each document, with whatever explicit overrides, is really out
of step!

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe


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