RE: [xml-dev] "XML for the Long Haul" program available

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

> People who create, store, query, or serve XML expect it to live a 
> very long time. XML is platform- and application-independent, and by 
> and large it is platforms and applications that vanish. If by 
> encoding information in XML we have freed it from dependency on 
> specific platforms or applications, have we succeeded in ensuring 
> that the XML can live long into the future? Or is there more to it 
> than using XML? How can we best ensure that our data, all our data, 
> and its semantics survive this year, next year, ten years? into the 
> next millennium?

This is a fascinating topic.

Setting aside the issue of whether or not someone 200 years from now will be able to understand the semantics of the XML text that we create today, isn't there a more fundamental issue: will there be any tools that understand the encoding used by today's computers? Will UTF-8 still exist 200 years from now? Will there be tools that can interpret UTF-8 200 years from now?

/Roger