RE: [xml-dev] Marketplace XML Vocabularies

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

" The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic is useful"

How?  For what?  The answer usually is "good layering" of the processors.
XML goes as far as to describe the cases for as errors a bad parse produces
and stops there.

1. Should international standards (bring your own authority) relying on XML
vocabularies by common practice if not requirement contain a semantic
description of some form that is not simply commented natural language?

2.  The question isn't should XML have such descriptions beyond what is
there in XML now, is it?

I'd say yes to one and no to two.  One, because you need better
interoperability at scales where now the scales are not simply distributions
but cohesion across versions of different system components from different
vendors.  Reliability inter-framework, so to speak.   

XML enables you to keep a distance.   You need something to fill the gaps.
Work on a better way to use the XML vocabularies more reliably is really an
issue of picking the ones you intend to share at the greatest distribution
and strengthening their coupling at the semantic layers while keeping the
vocabulary front and center for the content makers.

IMHO, this sounds like the work going on in HTML5.   Perhaps it is a
question of a better browser but it seems that being browser-bound means
being very restrictive in the markup applied or very liberal in the markup
and very restrictive in the object-specification.   The object spec approach
works pretty well.  Johannes Behr and Crew were able to get X3D to run well
because the behaviors of the language being DOM integrated was already
cohesive in it's own behaviors so a DOM interface worked as expected. SVG
showed the way.

I've not seen much discussion of the topic here where once it would have
been debated like it was a world treaty.  What do you think about HTML5?

len