- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 11:53:53 -0700
- To: Svgdeveloper@aol.com, simonstl@simonstl.com, www-tag@w3.org, www-style@w3.org
At 1:49 PM -0400 8/20/02, Svgdeveloper@aol.com wrote: >Since the XML 1.0 Rec states, as I mentioned earlier, "The >Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is >completely described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic >SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way >that is now possible with HTML." one can see why they carefully >steer away from the term "generic" XML. > >It seems to me much healthier to know if Tim, Kynn and others >actually hold that statement in the XML 1.0 REC (2nd Edition) to be >false. In other words not only are the goal posts being moved but >the goals too. :) Well, I think I have explained the problems with "generic" (or "arbitrary" or "raw" or "unknown") XML documents sufficiently already on this list, when it comes to accessibility. The goal of XML 1.0 may indeed be for generic SGML to be served, received, and processed in the manner possible with HTML. However, XML 1.0 does not reach that goal by itself; this is obvious in a number of other areas, as well. For example, generic XML as defined in the XML 1.0 specification does not allow for hypertext linking. These are provided in XLink. Metadata relationships cannot be specified in generic XML, but this can be done in RDF. So while the goal may be to allow XML to be used generically on the Web, I think it is clearly premature to claim that such a goal was actually reached with the issuance of XML 1.0. Until a solution for sending generic XML is developed that takes into account the needs of people with disabilities for accessibility -- along with other requirements for serving generic XML -- then this goal will not have been met. I am under no specific avoidance of the term "generic" when applied to XML, so please don't accuse me of some sort of intellectual dishonesty. The goal remains the same, but at this time it is far from reachable. --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 http://cssin24hours.com Kynn on Web Accessibility ->> http://kynn.com/+sitepoint
Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2002 15:04:01 UTC