RE: [xml-dev] XML spec and XSD

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

In my mind it wasn't clear where validation belonged and secondly who should
be responsible for it being done.  To clarify, SGML made it reasonably
simple for a technical writer to express document definition, not validation
per se, but an as-simple-as=possible 'these are the contents in the order
needed for this specific task or communication'.  Most of the fancy math
computer sciency database stuff got ladled on to that basic need because we
in the business of writing documents were increasingly writing for computer
science applications instead of law, regulations, etc.  We tended to bow
down to the programmers.

Dropping validation was on some minds most particularly the computer
scientists who wanted markup to serve their needs.   They have a lot of
experience string schlepping and the idea that validation was necessary to
define outside of their own code seemed wasteful and that at a time when
every CPU cycle was sacred because scarce.   To the writers having the
toolkit to define the document made sense because frankly the computer
scientists were even lousier at that then the lawyers had been.  So markup
became the possession of the computer scientists instead of the writers.

It is bit like the scene in Star Wars where the Senate cheers mightily for
the new Emperor.  They think it a pretty good idea at the time.

DTDs were and in many ways still a pretty good compromise for giving power
tools to people who don't write a lot of code.  XSD might have been a better
compromise but once again the theoreticians, the math wonks and the compiler
wonks took the field.  Like a very heavy sword, it became something very
powerful in the right hands and too hard to wield in others.

Sad but so:  Microsoft had it right in the beginning.  Politics and market
ideology were the avatars of local ambition.  It's hard to fight a truckload
of speeding money driven by ideologues at the behest of bankers.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 07, 2009 8:08 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] XML spec and XSD

Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> But I feel, that mentioning XSD as a validation technology for XML
> documents, in the XML spec is perhaps a good idea since DTD is also
> mentioned in the XML spec (which is also a XML validation technology).
> I feel, doing so doesn't promote any pedagogic or marketing attitudes
> towards XSD.

It's history.  Leaving aside the question of how damaging W3C XML Schema 
has been, it simply wasn't part of the original XML vision.

The three parts were supposed to be markup, style, and linking, learning 
from SGML, DSSSL, and HyTime respectively.  Markup, inheriting from the 
SGML vision, included DTDs.

I suspect that counting validation as a fourth component might have 
eased some problems all around, but that wasn't clear at the outset. 
That kind of change seems like a project for XML 2.0, not for an edition 
change.

(And, of course, I'd argue hard against any effort to incorporate W3C 
XML Schema explicitly into XML 2.0....)

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

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