- From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:17:42 -0700
- To: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@webbackplane.com>
- Cc: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>, Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "Henry S.Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>, "www-tag@w3.org List" <www-tag@w3.org>, "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>, "public-xhtml2@w3.org WG" <public-xhtml2@w3.org>, "wai-xtech@w3.org WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Mark Birbeck wrote: > The first thing I would do is prise apart the syntax and the infoset. > I don't see any reason why the underlying representation of a DOM > can't be taken as given, even if we fiddle around to remove the need > for prefix-explosion in the mark-up. > Cart: let me just attach you to the front of the horse here. Syntax is the only thing we have. Syntax is the only thing XML brings to the table. There is no common data model for XML, and fundamentally there can't be one. Syntax is interoperable across domains, operating systems, organizations, and countries. Data models don't usually survive the transition from one application to the next, much less the transition from one computer to another, or one organization to another. And of all the things XML has brought to the table, about the only one I can think of that is worse than namespaces is DOM. It's ugly, inconsistent, memory-intensive, slow, thoroughly despised by users, and frankly just hideous. For a spec designed for long-term storage and wire transport, any object model is a non-starter. It is flat-out impossible to put objects on the wire. Serialized objects are an oxymoron, a self-contradicting fantasy. They are the perpetual motion machine of computing. There's a reason object serialization schemes have failed time and again, and it's not just because we haven't invented the right one yet. Defining XML in terms of any object model would not just be a bad idea. It would be impossible. (This is not to the say, by the way, that there might not be better syntaxes than the one we've labeled XML. There are almost certainly are. But any such improved syntax would have to be just that: syntax, not an object model.) XML did prise apart syntax and the infoset. That's was one of its most significant innovations, perhaps its most significant. The infoset is not a core feature of XML. It is simply one understanding of an actual XML document, not the understanding of a document. The infoset may or may not be useful in any given application and developers are free to use it or not as they see fit. The genius of XML was precisely in defining an interoperable syntax while allowing many different models of that syntax. To define a single model while allowing many different syntaxes is precisely the opposite of what XML is about, and why XML has succeeded. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
Received on Wednesday, 4 June 2008 13:18:29 UTC