Re[2]: section 1, intro, for review

On Monday, 18 March, 2002, 13:48:20, Paul wrote:

>> as well as technologies for designing new formats (XML, Namespaces,
PC> DOM).

PC> How does DOM permit someone to "design a new format"?

One of the fascinating things about working on the design of SVG 1.O
was the realization that there were at least two, non-intersecting
communities in terms of design.

One group (the traditional XML/SGML group) who were primarily
interested in the DTD as the 'real spec' and would phrase questions
about the prose in terms of "the DTD says blah so the text is wrong
when it says ....."; they would consider the object model to be a mere
temporary in-memory representation of the real XML and as incidental,
or someone elses problem.

Another group (the dynamic HTML/server-side programming group) who
were primarily interested in the object model as the 'real spec' and
would phrase questions about the prose in terms of "object foo
inherits from blah so the text is wrong when it says ....."; they
would consider the xml form as a mere temporary serialisation, used to
ship object models across the net - incidental, or someone elses
problem.

So given the experience of designing (the first time, for me) a markup
language and its object model at the same time, I suggested to Dan
that DOM be added along with XML.

Of course, it is possible to design a new format without a DOM, just
as it is possible without namespaces or indeed without XML.

PC> And shouldn't XML Schema be in this list?

Yes. Originally, it was on that list. Trouble was, it was in both
columns (it can be included in an instance, for example in XForms, and
also is one of those 'meta' things like XML and Schem,as (languages
for writing languages).

So having it on either list (or both) introduced a need for further
explanation. Since the list is not exhaustyive but illustrative, the
solution chosen was to remove W3XC XML Schema from the list.... there
are probably better solutions.


-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Monday, 18 March 2002 09:56:53 UTC