RE: [xml-dev] "Introducing MicroXML, Part 1: Explore the basicprinciples

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

On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 11:32 -0500, Len Bullard wrote:

> It isn't disrespect for HTML.  Do remember that lots of systems
> implement href like links before HTML.  The experience is consequential
> and deep.  See Dexter.

Nice to see a reference to the Dexter model.

There was a lot of good in HyTime but you are right, it was too hard and
the simpler new upstart WWW won out. But the desire for, and usefulness
of, multi-way links and time-based links did not vanish. People use
complex JavaScript libraries on the Web because the HTML model is too
simple and not easily extensible.

For me our biggest mistake in not making an XML version of HyTime
architectural forms was that we don't have a way to tie an XML
vocabulary to a canonical indexable form, e.g. for search engines to
produce plausible snippets in result listings - without that, putting
XML documents on the Web is an SEO disaster. If more people were doing
it, there might be traction in a way to link a search-specific XSLT
transform to a document. It's not clear to me the indexers would want to
have to run something fairly resource-intensive on each document, though
- Google does do some JavaScript now I think, so hard to tell.

For me, if you want XML to become popular on the Web, you need it to be
indexed, and probably you'd want to be able also to run JavaScript or
something like Mike Kay's client-based XSLT DOM event scripting, so
would want something like xml:script. So there's a whole bunch of things
needed, and all in an environment that rejected XHTML 2, an environment
hostile to XML in the first place.

I don't think it's a non-starter, but I also don't think changing the
syntax of "href" is a "killer app" that would drive people to use XML.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/