Re: [xml-dev] RE: James Clark: XML versus the Web

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Tue, 2010-11-30 at 19:59 -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm increasingly of the opinion that XML "jumped the shark" with the
> > XML Namespaces specification.
> 
> Namespaces was at least the nose of the shark. I think we really
> should have insisted that prefixes not be able to be bound to more
> than one URI in the same document.

There are a lot of problems with the namespace spec. I don't think that
particular restriction would be helpful, because it would complicate
reuse of document fragments. But, lack of consensus at the time
reflected lack of implementation experience -- namespaces should have
been put on hold for a couple of years at least.

> Schemas are bad, but ignorable.
I think XSD has some OK parts, and, like namespaces, meets some real
needs... while causing lots of problems of its own.

> 
> I remain convinced, though, that the single biggest mistake was DOM.

+1 here, totally agree.

Liam


-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/