Re: Use cases

Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> writes:
>> I'm trying to think of any use case where this scenario would hold true.
>
> I'll leave responding to this bit to Norm.

I don't have a specific case in mind that exists today. But I think the
situation will arise. It follows, in my mind at least, naturally from
the following observations:

1. The developer community that knows/uses HTML+other web technologies
   is larger today than the XML developer community and will always be
   larger.

2. The future is longer than the past.

3. When the dust settles in the browser space, when HTML5 processing
   is ubiquitously deployed across all of the consumer space from
   desktops to laptops to tablets to smart phones, developers will
   find other things to do with their HTML5 parsers and JavaScript
   engines and CSS stylers.

4. Some of the innovations will be made by folks who haven't used
   XML, don't see the point, and don't care.

Nevertheless, some of us will have content marked up in angle brackets
using tags that aren't HTML5+MathML+SVG+whateverelsethewgblessesinthefuture.

Some of us will find ourselves in the position of wanting (ooh, that's
a cool app!) or needing (by executive order, though shalt submit all
Frobnitz requests through the Frooble tool!) to integrate our non-HTML5
angle brackety content into those tools.

I don't think this is necessarily an unreasonable position. There's
nothing that logically prevents JavaScript and CSS, for example, from
interacting with an XML DOM in the obvious manner. In fact, since
Henri pointed out on the call that the HTML5 spec is working hard to
unify the underlying object models, this is probably becoming easier.

Maybe the answer is as simple as: as long as XML matters, developers
of those tools will add an XML parser to the front because it's so
easy and if XML doesn't matter any more, then no one will care so this
use case is irrelevant.

I was crafting use cases and thought that if there are XML tools today
with which I want to use HTML5, then it follows that there are or will
be HTML5 tools with which I will want to use XML.

But if I'm wrong, then we can move on quickly :-)

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
Lead Engineer
MarkLogic Corporation
www.marklogic.com