Re: [xml-dev] Towards XML 2.0

[Ben Trafford <ben@prodigal.ca>]

On Tue, 2010-12-07 at 20:25 -0500, Kurt Cagle wrote:
> That's one of the central problems with any solution of getting XML on
> the browser - it presents a challenge to the control that the HTML
> core group has over standards there.

This is a central issue, I agree. One of the things about the early XML
days that is missing from this discussion was the marketing of it. XML,
as you may recall, was a bit of a skunkworks project at W3C -- people
were being told from every angle that XML couldn't work, wouldn't work,
because everything was about HTML.

And yet it did.

The reality that I've experienced in that last fifteen years is that
those who do the work, and popularize their work, win the day. The HTML5
people demonstrated this, effectively creating a groundswell that
shifted the world away from XHTML.

The biggest problem with getting XML in the browsers is that no one has
been willing or interested in doing the work. And the reason they
haven't been interested is because XML does not align with commonly used
browser technology (i.e. CSS, Javascript in some senses, links, forms,
etc.).

It seems fairly clear to me that if we define a new way in which XML can
work in the browser, provide a reference implementation of the same, and
then promote it with the same fervor that XML and HTML5 were promoted,
then we can overcome this anti-XML bias.

--->Ben