Re: Public list or not? (Was What are Semantics?)

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> 4. Is it acceptable to publish raw XML on the Web? While this was one of 
> the original goals of XML 1.0, some members of the WAI object to this 
> strongly. If it is acceptable to publish raw XML, then there are a lot 
> of other questions about stylesheets, metadata, accessibility, and so 
> forth that need to be adressed as well. On the other hand, if the 
> position that only HTML/XHTML, and a few other predefined vocabularies 
> are suitable for Web publication, then a lot of other issues become moot.

1. Publishing raw XML is fine if you're aiming it at a specific group of 
other people who know the vocabulary and how to deal with it.  It isn't 
really "raw XML" in this case, it's some language agreed on advance by 
co-operating parties.

2. Publishing raw XML to the world might make sense if you accompanied 
it with sufficient ancillary tools (stylesheets, java classes, whatever) 
that somebody who didn't know the vocabulary could still do something 
useful with it.

3. Publishing *anything* for general human consumption and not dealing 
with accessibility issues is stupid, immoral, and bad for business, as 
has been made clear many times, not just by the W3C.

It's not obvious that any of these issues are architectural, except for 
there's no automated and generally workable way to do @2 right now, and 
some might see this as an architectural hole.  -Tim

Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2002 12:36:06 UTC