Re: [xml-dev] Where is XML going

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@ibiblio.org>]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:

> The Web has ignored our glorious creations because it mostly doesn't need
> them.  The one exception I can think of is XLink/XPointer, which I suspect
> failed because it never seemed simple enough to actually use - the simple
> links that hit the 80 mark are already supported more simply elsewhere.=

I think the web does need them, and it's reinvented and continues to
reinvent them, badly. However XML also needs to learn from the web
(and JSON in particular). JSON serves a use case that was not
originally anticipated, and that XML has pretty much ignored for going
on 14 years. I'd like to correct that.

However I do not think XML starts or ends with the Web either. JSON's
vaguely plausible outside of the web, but little else of the web stack
is. No one writes desktop applications in JavaScript, and few authors
publish books in HTML. Were we to develop something that made XML more
useful outside of the web browser, that would still be a success. At
this point I have no expectations that XML will be used directly in
the browser. That ship has sailed. (though I do feel compelled to note
that XML failed on the web not because XML was the wrong answer. XML
on the Web failed due to misfeasance by both browser vendors and the
W3C.)

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@ibiblio.org