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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: RFD: comp.text.xml
 Steven Champeon wrote: > > Len, you're sounding a bit defensive. Quite true. Some ideas and principles are worth defending to a point. This post is the last point. I've not time for a flamewar, and anyway, that is what the icon that looks like crossed sabres on the Outlook menu is there to stop. :-) > Do you think C would have gotten as > far as it did if every time someone brought it up, someone else popped up > to remind everyone that it was inspired by BCPL? Need we say that Java was > once named Oak in order to reap its benefits? No. That we remember this is the case is sufficient. OTOH, in my own descriptions of these, I decline to call Java a standard. It is a product of Sun well on its way to becoming a standard technology similar to RealMedia. These distinctions enable me to look at customers and say, "yes, runs best on X machine" and not endure the endless "But Why Won't They Implement the Standard?" questions. When it goes to ISO, as HTML has, I will call it a standard. Until then, XML is a standard technology and the property of the W3C. > I started out working with SGML, waited for the CALS table model, hung > out wondering when DSSSL would be done, learned Author/Editor's internal > styles language as a desperation measure, bemoaned the ridiculous complexity > of FOSI, and when the Web hit I never looked back. With you all the way. I spent time and personal capital pleading for a simplification. When the SGML On The Web project was announced, I stepped up to endorse it. It was an idea whose time had come and in fact, was overdue. I had watched customers, friends, companies, pay large prices. OTOH, I was also there to see certain ones pay off as SGML delivered on the lifecycle properties promised. Markup works. Since XML is the same subset of SGML that most of us had always been using, I feel confident it will deliver the same benefits. No quarrel there. > I'm thrilled to death > that the idea of separating presentation from markup has become a reality > for those of us without multi-million dollar consulting budgets, So am I Steve, but frankly, I am the rogue who didn't buy into the whole arcana and was using an SGML hypertext system with stylesheets by 1992-93. I even arranged to give it away: IADS. It wasn't everything I wanted, but it sure proved the point, and hey, it even let you design and use your own DTDs. That reality has been real for almost a decade. > and I'm > thrilled that XML will be part of the next generation of browsers. I'm > afraid that Microsoft has cornered the market on Windows-based XML parsing, > by virtue of its being built into the "Internet Explorer OS Upgrade" blob > they seem to be pushing as a pre-req for any new application installs, This doesn't bother me a bit. The rules for introducing standard technologies using the W3C processes have been followed apparently to the letter. Practicality prevails. At this point, MS is the defacto standard platform. Having XML on it is the right thing. It will be interesting to see how well it is used and by whom. There are some real issues about integrating Chrome with other standard languages, but that is another problem to be worked. I think XML and MS may soon face a pretty unruly crowd over that one. > but the fact that there is a standard to appeal to - a simple standard, > which doesn't give MS much cover should they decide to slightly alter > their implementation. I think it's amazing that there are fully-functional > parsers out there today. Since the goal was to enable the DPH to write a parser in a week or so, this shouldn't amaze you too much. Meeting the design requirements is usually good practice in engineering efforts. Given that no one had to start from scratch and most of the major decisions were pruning decisions over existing solid work, I would be very surprised if that weren't the case. > AFAIK, there isn't a single application out there > which fully supports all of the SGML arcana. AFAIK, you are right and that hasn't made a warts worth of difference. SGML has been and is applied to large publishing and database projects with much success. Cost of tools varied, but that was mainly in the rendering. The SGML vendor community overcharged and often overemphasized complete compliance. It was suicide and opened the door to the events that followed. The SGML Way was a recipe for commercial failure. XML proves that lesson was learned. Good. > Len, I've known you since my first days reading comp.text.sgml, and I > respect your enlightened approach to subjects both technical and humane. Thank you. > Please don't expect XML to be a bait-and-switch move to bring SGML into > everyone's home. I don't expect it to be. Nor did I expect SGML On The Web to be a bait and switch move to replace SGML with XML, but I was wrong. OTOH, at certain levels, I don't care about that either. For those of us who were fortunate enough to watch Dr. Goldfarb, James Mason, Lynn Price, Martin Bryan, Steve Newcomb, Sharon Adler, Anders Berglund, and the others who created SGML, XML is the crowning achievement, the proof that their ideas and their work have succeeded. If a name change is required to ensure the continuing success, so be it. But I will not sit by and watch them be robbed by the also rans and newtoBes of the industry of the credit for that. Not only does that deny what I know to be true, it is wrong. It also repeats and legitimizes that same precedent set by those who have publicly derided a work to capture their own market, then turn to take that same work, rename it, and call themselves fathers of a new language. History requires a certain ethical and moral payment: respect. > And please recognize that XML is a powerful, simple, > iteration on some of the ideas espoused by SGML. To be sure: SGML On The Web. > Where XML will not suffice, > perhaps SGML will thrive. ISO 8879 is dead. Without a base of implementors, no ideas however good can thrive. But there will be a price for it. ISO rules and processes had a hint of openness and rule of law. A Don Park stood a chance in that. Yet these rules and processes are made by men and in that, justice is the gift of the individual. I remember that very strange fellow with the prison tattoos who made it into the HyTime meeting in Almaden (sorry eliot, this predates you). I thought it awkward that he was there, yet, Dr Goldfarb neither feared him nor took measures to remove him. It was an awesome demonstration of integrity. If this is the case with the Director, then let him change the rules and open the meetings. This technology which he espouses and has done so much to promote enables it and without nearly the problems Dr. Goldfarb overcame. Let him be that much a man, and I will give him that much credit. > But where XML will suffice, its users need not > know thing one about SGML. In my mind, this is a good thing. In my view, they are the same thing and that is a good thing. If we have to accept that our *standards* are the product of The Director's approval, and that only the elect can know the shape of things to come such that a Don Park doesn't even have half a chance to compete, then it is time to go back to playing guitar for happy hour crowds. It is something I understand and can see the good of doing. I appreciate your comments, Steve. I really do. But my time here is past and there are other tasks to be done. There will be comp.text.xml, then there will be whatever follows that. As the twig is bent.... len xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... 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