RE: [xml-dev] Whither XML ?

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

Hi Folks,

This has been an illuminating discussion for me. Thank you.

Here is a recap of what I learned:

1. The W3C creates complex client-side standards and lobs them over the wall expecting browser vendors to implement them at their own cost, in software products from which no-one earns any revenue.

2. Some of the standards get implemented, such as XSLT 1.0 and CSS. Many of them don't, such as XSLT 2.0, XForms, and SVG.

3. The browser has become a bottleneck in terms of moving the technology forward. We're all constrained to move forward at the pace of the slowest browser.

4. The browser needs to become a much more open platform, in which the browser-maker delivers interoperable extensibility and the rest of the community has the ability to decide what gets offered (and what gets used) on top of the basic platform: an architecture in which both the document markup and the functionality associated with the markup are open and extensible - and in which they are all extensible using standardized interfaces.


How do we achieve the last item?

/Roger