Re: What would count as an unbiased survey?

"Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> writes:
> The _only_ reason for
> pursuing this question is to rebut the proposition, often advanced but
> not, to my knowledge, ever substantiated, that W3C XML Schema is not
> used very much, so e.g. delaying the next version is not a big deal.

There's no question in my mind that XSD is widely used. I don't know
how to demostrate that with an unbiased survey. I don't even know how
one would go about reaching the actual users in order to ask them to
fill out such a survey. But I don't question that it's widely deployed.

I think one could have a long and interesting discussion about whether
or not XSD 1.0 had the right goals, whether or not it accomplished
them, what could have been done different or better, etc. But given
that XSD 1.0 is a Recommendation, that's more-or-less water under the
bridge.

By the same token, one could ask if XSD 1.1 had the right goals, etc.
But given that the WG has worked long and hard in good faith to
produce XSD 1.1, which fixes significant problems in XSD 1.0 that will
make XSD better and easier to use, and have almost finished, it seems
disingenuous to stand in the way.

By all means, let's not start working on XSD 2.0 until we figure out
what would really be of most benefit to the community, but let the WG
get 1.1 out the door. It represents legitimate, incremental
improvement on an existing Recommendation.

I'm not particularly a fan of XSD, but I will use XSD 1.1 where I had
no plans to use XSD 1.0.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Time is a great teacher, but
http://nwalsh.com/            | unfortunately it kills all its
                              | pupils.-- Berlioz