Re: complexity (was: Re: XHTML and RDF)

>* Orion Adrian wrote:
> >I think a friend of mine hit this on the head. It doesn't really matter 
>who
> >is coming up with these specs, the people coming up with the specs don't
> >have to implement them or use them with the possible exception of the XML
> >and HTML working groups.
>
>Oh please, it's the W3C Membership who comes up with these specs and you
>cannot seriously claim that W3C Members are not implementers or users of
>these specs.

Admittedly I'm venting. I'm venting because I'm frustrated with how the 
specs have turned out. And I'm dissappointed with how the specs turned out 
for a lot of technologoies. XLink, RDF, OWL, XML Schema are just a few. I'm 
dissapointed with little oversights that could have made these truly usable 
to me, but they just aren't. I'd like to see a serious rethinking of these 
technologies. But to be fair some successes to me are:

XML (everything except namespaces), XSLT, XPath, XInclude (mostly).

Some people are too harsh, myself included. I was unfair, but I believe 
there is merit behind my disappointment and I do believe a much better job 
could have been done on various technologies.

> >Now given the overall structure of the W3C, I don't see a lot that they 
>can
> >do about that. Perhaps what the W3C should concentrate on is culling back
> >existing standards and simplifying them.
>
>That would among other things require consensus about what consitutes
>simplicity. Also note that something that is simple to implement might
>be complicated to author or the other way round, and that simplicity
>is only one of the many desired properties of a technology. You might be
>interested in reading the materials at <http://www.w3.org/2003/Editors/>

Thanks for the link. My desire for simplicity is for authorship first and 
implementation second. Why? Because these documents are going to be authored 
a lot more often than implemented. However I do believe that in the cases of 
XML Namescapes, XML Schema, XLink, RDF and OWL they could both be made 
simpler to implement and simpler to author. I think Relax NG is an excellent 
example of a schema language that is both.

Orion Adrian

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Received on Thursday, 8 April 2004 02:01:58 UTC