- From: Imsieke, Gerrit, le-tex <gerrit.imsieke@le-tex.de>
- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2017 08:55:50 +0100
- To: xproc-dev@w3.org
Hi Andreas, You raised issues around both XProc and XML in general. Although both are somehow related, please don’t equate or confound them. On 12/11/2017 13:00, Andreas Mixich wrote: > Hi, > > a little bit off-topic, so, sorry on that, but I know, that some core > XML people are on this list, who have been involved in one or more > charters/working-groups and thus I would like to ask, what all that > > Note: The XML Processing Model Working Group was closed in 2016. > > on pages like the /XML Core Working Group Public Page/ and /XML > Processing Model Working Group/ page mean. The “XML Processing Model Working Group” is the XProc working group. All working groups have a charter where its goals are written down and the date by which the goals must be reached. After failing to get an XProc 2.0 spec out when the XProc WG mandate ended last year, the W3C published an intermediate draft as a WG note. Some volunteers picked it up from there and are now working on what they called XProc 3.0. The volunteers operate as a W3C community group [2], one of the most important effects of this being that all contributions be made under the W3C patent policy [3]. The actual spec work is maintained in a Github repository [4], and there are meetings (Amsterdam 2016-09, Prague 2017-02, London 2017-06, Aachen 2017-09, Prague 2018-02) with an attendance of 12–16 people. You don’t have to be a member of the Community Group to attend, although the hurdle to become a member is very low. The XML core group’s charter seems to have expired, but like the XProc charter’s expiry, it doesn’t keep people from using XML. XML-related specifications continue to be written and used at different standardization bodies. You mentioned OASIS where, among other things, DocBook XML is maintained. A notable recent activity is the standardization of NISO STS [5], a JATS derivate for specifying the markup of standards documents. XML is strong in publishing, from legal to STEM to fiction, and in the Digital Humanities. Although the TEI folks are trying to specify their content models independent from an XML serialization, the (actively maintained) TEI P5 guidelines are mostly describing customization mechanisms for XML schemas and documents. Many publishers need to produce and consume more “webby” formats such as the HTML serialization of HTML5 or JSON. With a probable replacement of the XML-based EPUB format with something that is purely based on HTML5 and JSON [6], this requirement will become more important. In order to build a bridge between the largely XML-based content repositories of publishers and the Web-based publication formats, XPath 3.1 and the specifications that use it, namely XQuery 3.1 and XSLT 3.0, are able to convert between JSON and XML and to serialize (non-XML) HTML according to the HTML5 spec [7]. On the other hand, tools such as validator.nu expose HTML5 documents in different tree models that can be read by XML processors. > > I am aware of the damaged state of XML, especially on the Web (HTML5, > JSON, etc.), but has XML lost its authoritative decisions body? Or are > these things now being done over at OASIS? I wouldn’t call it damaged, although it certainly lost popularity. We see less XML hype than, for example, in 1999 where all kinds of software touted to be XML-based even when only their name-value configuration file was in XML syntax. I don’t want to recount the XHTML 2.0 history here, but XML and its proponents have been viewed as overhyped or arrogant by some. They did things differently; for example, in the HTML5 spec and in other WHATWG specs there are minutely detailed procedural specs for data formats (HTML itself, URLs, etc.), where XML formats tend to be defined in a more declarative fashion. We also see overuse of JSON for documents where XML is certainly more fit. When all hype cycles are over, I’m confindent that XML (but also JSON, and probably also CommonMark) will emerge as a survivor. > > Is there some clarifying article/blog post, I could learn more about the > current state of affairs? One of the worst things, that could happen to > XML, would be, if, having become a niche-product, organizations would > start implementing and extending “in-house”, fragmenting what never > ought to become fragmented. There are certain initiatives, for example MicroXML [8], to cut away things from XML that many people consider ill-designed, such as namespaces. I’m a die-hard XML namespace proponent, but I’m certainly in the minority [9]. I don’t think that anything that has XML or X in its name will attract new users. The X has become so unpopular even in the enterprise space that a company whose flagship product is based on XQuery denies this legacy by claiming to offer an enterprise NoSQL database [10]. XProc, in its 3.0 version, will probably remain most popular in publishing where XML and XML-based formats continue to be important. In June, I started writing an article “The State of XProc in 2017.” I hope to finish it when it’s still 2017. It will be published on xml.com. Gerrit [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/xproc20/ [2] https://www.w3.org/community/xproc-next/ [3] https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/ [4] https://github.com/xproc/3.0-specification [5] http://niso-sts.org/ [6] https://www.w3.org/TR/pwp/ [7] https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#syntax [8] https://www.xml.com/articles/2017/06/03/simplifying-xml-microxml/ [9] https://twitter.com/gimsieke/status/432250945473241089 [10] http://www.marklogic.com/ -- Gerrit Imsieke Geschäftsführer / Managing Director le-tex publishing services GmbH Weissenfelser Str. 84, 04229 Leipzig, Germany Phone +49 341 355356 110, Fax +49 341 355356 510 gerrit.imsieke@le-tex.de, http://www.le-tex.de Registergericht / Commercial Register: Amtsgericht Leipzig Registernummer / Registration Number: HRB 24930 Geschäftsführer: Gerrit Imsieke, Svea Jelonek, Thomas Schmidt, Dr. Reinhard Vöckler
Received on Monday, 13 November 2017 07:56:38 UTC