RE: document node attributes

Hi,

> > [Liam wrote:]
> > > No, which is why it's not going in XML core.
> 
> 
> I don't speak for the XML Core Working Group. However, a "one 
> eature at a time" approach isn't going to fly.

I can't parse this.  Can you elaborate a bit please.


> 
> XML isn't used much on the Web today because of money. The 
> business reasons are not primarily to do with hyperlinking, 
> although I agree that's part of it.
> 
> The problems I see are:
> 
> 1. You can't put JavaScript-based ads in XML.

XML describes content, not presentation.  If you can put links in XML,
you should be able to put links to ads if you like.  Why you
would put links to ads in data is a bit beyond me, but one might
find a reason in this day and age.

> 
> 2. Search engines don't know how to make useful result 
> snippets from XML, so XML files get lower ranking in search 
> results. 

Current search engines are focused on presenting stuff to humans to read,
so it's no wonder they pay no attention to xml.

But say there was markup language for spreadsheets, with a media 
type application/spreadsheet+xml. A crawler which is programmed
for application/spreadsheet+xml will 'know' what to do with it,
and a search engine will develop a presentation that will become
familiar to people. 


> 
> But it would need to have backing of browser programmers, 
> most of whom seem to hate XML with a passion

Yes, that's true.  But maybe helping XML conform to the style of the 
web would help that situation: http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/02/xml-links

>, and search 
> engine vendors, who will act if there's enough content.

Yes!  As you mentioned, more XML may be generated in a single day
than exists on the Web as a whole.  Put in a little standard linking
and who knows what could happen.

> 
> My "automatic namespaces" proposal is one way to do 
> architectural forms without using explicit namespaces; i 
> think John Cowan is going to propse another at Balisage this 
> August. What I mean here is the ability to make a simple 
> mapping between elements and attributes in the document and 
> some very simple set of properties. One could use XSLT, but 
> that has unbounded computation, so something simpler to say, 
> "construct a URI by concatenating these two attributes in 
> this way with this string" and, "this element's contents form 
> the document title", and, "para elements break paragraphs".

Well simplicity always has an attraction, but I have doubts that
architectural forms are simple enough.  I believe that you
can style XML with CSS currently, so if you could link to a
CSS resource from an XML resource that would help the presentation
of arbitrary XML.

Cheers,
Peter

Received on Friday, 5 July 2013 12:16:32 UTC