Re: [xml-dev] XML is more than just the browser

[Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>]

Greetings

On 2010 Dec 19, at 12:59, Pete Cordell wrote:

> I glibly mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted my corn flake packets to report when they were nearly empty.  In a yet more contrived example I can imagine my cake packet reporting that I had eaten two slices of cake. Having used a service to check the calorific value of that cake, and using my local configuration file to indicate that I prefer cycling to running, my system can calculate that I need to do 3 days of cycling to burn that off. Using a mapping service, a suitable route has been calculated, and my diary service has been used to find a time when I'm free to do it.  It's booked me a hotel, and it's interrogated my bike to find out that I have a flat tire, and I can get a replacement at the second nearest cycle shop (checked via mapping) because the nearest one is out of stock.  The results of this have been pushed to my mobile phone as an e-mail and suitable additions to my calendar.

You've just described the Semantic Web, and the whole Linked Data movement.

It's not _markup_ that enables that, but agreement, or emergent consensus, on how to write down the notion 'has calorific value' (which looks a lot like the design of element names).  So this is probably not really a terrific MicroXML use-case.

> Way more exciting than just rendering boring HTML IMO!

Indeed: way more exciting, and slowly getting there.

> This is enabled by a ubiquitous data format.  A mash-up, if you will, of numerous different sources of data to enable this to happen.
[...]
>  What would be really helpful is an agreed minimal format that can satisfy all of these parties, and then we can build exciting tools on this common infrastructure.


That would be RDF.  Don't look at at RDF/XML, if you want to keep your lunch; Turtle is readable and there are multiple parsers.

See you,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk