Re: [xml-dev] [October, 2006] Tim Berners-Lee: the attempt to getthe wo

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 4/8/11 7:47 AM, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I am reading about the history of HTML5. This blog from Tim Berners-Lee seems to be quite important:
>
> http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/166
>
> Here's something he states in that blog:
>
>      Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years.
>      It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt
>      to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around
>      attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces
>      all at once didn't work.

Yeah, it didn't.  I don't think TimBL ever really "got" XML, though, and 
it's more than a little amusing to hear him of all people complain that 
namespaces were a problem for adoption.

(The HTML5 chairs just agreed to let namespace prefixes survive into 
HTML5: 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0689.html> 
It's notable from an XML perspective that it was an issue.)

I frequently wish that XML had been standardized some place other than 
the W3C, which promptly polluted it with weirdly broken if you looked 
closely URI-based notions from the (useful but different) RDF work its 
upper folks really cared about.

I understand quite well, though, that it seemed like the best option at 
the time.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/