RE: [xml-dev] Re: Native XML Interfaces

[cbullard@hiwaay.net]

We face the fact that we will solve the same but slightly different  
problem many times in a career and get good at that by experience.    
If we don't make too many people angry doing it, we'll have a long  
career and will have moved the rock a bit closer to the top of the hill.

Consider how long ago we told them that federated registries and a bit  
of glue were the best it would get.  Today Dan B. is making schema.org  
work and the big server farm search engine vendors are working with  
it.  That's a success.  Takes time, work passed from hand to hand,  
names come and go but success.  Meanwhile the problems of intellectual  
property piracy are passed over as "social problems not ours to worry  
about" and a week ago the entertainment industry goes to the US  
Congress asking for the right to use trojans, rootkits and all the  
other programmer tools to go after the pirates.  Spy vs Spy.

Good layering is good architecture.  Forgetting the basis for the web  
is not technology but humans cooperating to mutual benefit is the  
hallmark of children playing with toys while the storms bear down.

Choose wisely.

len

Quoting David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>:

> This is quite interesting.
> Not pointing fingers just Pontificating from a glass house:)
>
> W3C doesn't want to be in the API world (dont blame them,  #fail #DOM #fail)
> XML is NOT designed to be a good language fit, its designed to be a  
> good markup fit #success #markup-authors #fail #programmers.
> BUT as a side effect its actually fairly painful in "normal" languages.
> So instead of inventing API's W3C (and friends of course, me  
> included) create DSL's
> XSLT, XPath, XQuery, XProc , xmlsh (my shameless plug)
>
> So instead of creating API's  W3C and others create DSL's which  
> actually work well with the XDM ... but keep their
> hands free of the blood of APIs.
>
>
> In the meantime JSON takes off because its definitely NOT a markup  
> language (out of the mouth of the author, yes),
> but IS designed to bind to existing languages/APIs.
>
> Now this isn't "bad" ... the two often have different audiences and  
> use cases.  And really ... are we in a markup war ?
> More tools are good right ?
>
> Well to a point.  More markups/tools etc. do drain off the  
> intellectual work (in a physics and social sense)
> from people who might otherwise invest in another markup/tool.
> The denigrate case is what XML was trying to solve ... too many  
> formats. #solved #XML
> Of course XML only solved that at one layer and punted the rest up a  
> layer but still good right ?
> ( No longer writing in assembly we write in C ... wait, C++ , wait,  
> Java , wait Ruby , wait, Perl , wait ... Xxx)
> No longer write in binary proprietary formats now we write in XML  
> with special schemas (Office, ODF, PDF .... )
> But at least you can read the <> ... ha ha.
>
> It is quite a tangled web we weave trying to solve problems while  
> creating more.
> Not unlike the tension between political ideology.    Libertarianism  
> vs Socialism. (or insert <favorite opposing ideology>).
>
> Still ... there is an ongoing tension between standardization and creativity.
> Is it an inevitably unsolvable problem ?
> Should we strive for a solution or embrace chaos or both ?
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> David A. Lee
> dlee@calldei.com
> http://www.xmlsh.org
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liam R E Quin [mailto:liam@w3.org]
> Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 8:22 PM
> To: Kurt Cagle
> Cc: Len Bullard; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Re: Native XML Interfaces
>
> On Fri, 2013-05-31 at 11:21 -0700, Kurt Cagle wrote:
> [...]
>> I'm not sure more XML education works here though. Most times its a
>> language prejudice - they don't want to learn XML because it's not Java, or
>> JavaScript or Ruby, and because it can't easily be broken into "dot"
>> notations.
>
> XML is all about owning your own data - you own it as author. The
> application doesn't own it and neither does the programmer.
>
> As a result XML is not a close fit to any programming language, and
> "hard-core" programmers tend not to like it.
>
>
>>  Of course, I also think that the W3C missed a golden opportunity
>> to create an e4x-like standard - an analog to XPath that would have fit
>> more sympathetically into the C++/Java/JS formalisms.
>
> Actually I agree; when we had the chance there was a "W3C doesn't do
> APIs" mantra. I don't know its source.
>
> I'd also love to see golang-style concurrency in XQuery.
>
> 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
>
>
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