Re: "Separation of Content from Presentation"

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