Re: Re[2]: Clark's commentary

/ Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org> was heard to say:
| On Monday, January 07, 2002, 4:25:53 PM, Norm wrote:
|
| NW> / Stephen van Egmond <svanegmond@tinyplanet.ca> was heard to say:
| NW> | Clark proclaimed that we "should be free to stab the SGML
| NW> | community, what's left of it, in the back.", claiming that SGML
| NW> | compatibility is now of much lesser importance.   This seems like a
| NW> | highly dubious claim - what constraints does the SGML influences
| NW> | inflict upon us?
|
| Lack of structured attributes springs to mind.

I thought of that too. But that would be *such* a radical change, I'm
not sure it'd be XML anymore if we did that.

| NW> In a sense, we've already stabbed them in the back with namespaces. As
| NW> far as continuing influences, the first thing that comes to mind is
| NW> determinism. After that, I think a solution to the general problem of
| NW> character entities in a post-DTD world will probably require a
| NW> complete break with SGML.
|
| Or a web compatiiity annex two

Uh, yeah. Ok. :-)

| NW> | Clark recommended that XML Namespaces and Infoset be merged into the
| NW> | XML core spec, and DTDs be supplanted. Architecturally, is this an
| NW> | improvement, or no?
|
| NW> Probably. I think I'd (personally) be in favor of an XML 2.0 if *and
| NW> only if* there was agreement beforehand that XML 2.0 would be XML 1.0
| NW> + Namespaces + the Infoset + XML Base. (And not one iota more or less;
| NW> no other changes. None. Not one.)
|
| If you had added "a solution to the ID problem" in there I would have
| been right behind that suggestion.

That's a really hard one.

| NW> Without the proviso that there would be no other changes, the XML 2.0
| NW> effort would turn into a 90 person committee with everyone wanting to
| NW> add or subtract their own favorite or most hated features and the
| NW> effort would fail or produce something unusable.
|
| Well, that is certainly a possible outcome but if its a likely
| outcome, what does it tell us about the cohesion or otherwise of the
| XML market?

I'm not sure it tells us anything. All the players would feel that
they were only making "one little change".

But having watched the wranglings of influential vendors with vested
interests in more than one large committee, I'm reasonably confident
of my assertion.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM   | Why shouldn't things be largely absurd,
XML Standards Engineer | futile, and transitory? They are so, and we
XML Technology Center  | are so, and they and we go very well
Sun Microsystems, Inc. | together.--Santayana

Received on Monday, 7 January 2002 11:00:45 UTC