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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: More Stupid XML Articles
 That's pretty much it, Dimitri. Dvorak is in the camp that worry about what used to be referred to as the "balkanization of the web" and other oddities. As we once said, "as soon as you say interactive, you say program", and it comes with a cost. XML is there to reduce complexity and cost and is does that comparatively well. Actually, the hardest struggle I seem to be having with some locals is getting them to accept that in some situations the loosely coupled thin client is preferred and in others, tightly coupled fat clients are fine. These people argue to the extremes of exceptions as if one legitimate exception is enough to squelch the idea. Frankly, these are folks who don't want one more thin mint on their fat plate. We are paid to balance the exceptions in our designs, and to understand and explain that it is a balance based on load, local capabilities, issues of security, issues of lifecycle, and so on. Unfortunately, we end up having to explain the means instead of the end because we are presented with alternative means that may not apply. Telling people that XML is just a syntax is like telling people they can learn all they need to know about music by understanding one note completely. It is true, but it turns out, there is a lot to understand about one note. Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Dmitri Pavlenkov [mailto:dmitripavlenkov@y...] Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 10:33 AM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: More Stupid XML Articles "elegant simplicity of HTML"? To me it looks when HTML is simple, it's not elegant, and when it's elegant, it's not simple anymore! What, and add to this different UA requirements, even among desktop browsers, that becomes a greater mess. "a simple informational Web site for themselves or their families, or for a small business" I'm sure families and small businesses would appreciate better viewing and more features, if they could only get them :) I'd say they'll be very excited when they visit even a simple SVG site. Which _is_ easy, simple, and elegant. "XML is, in many ways, a vague standard insofar as definitions of XML elements are concerned" can we seriously consider that? The author is probably confusing definitions and interpretations. After all XML is a language for writing languages. The rules of writing XML are very strict, but there are no restrictions on what you may write. Ok, here's the whole paragraph: "Just look at the recent recommendations by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), which dominates Web standards. The W3C has recently added XSLT and XPath to the mix of XML-related standards to watch. XPath is a FAT (file allocation table) applied to an XML document. Great, now we need this kind of thing to keep track of a page. XSLT means Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. This amounts to a conversion mechanism that is predefined so that various media can adapt the XML Web page and view it exactly as it was created on competing browsers. So instead of some universal way to handle XML on different devices, you can define your own custom ways to handle it." I apologize for quoting the whole thing, but it seems author here, while trying to point out disadvantages of XML tools, managed to show us their great advantage :) "Nobody knows what to do about this." author is generalizing, I know what to do about this, you probably know, too, he should have said: "I don't know what to do about this." Another paragraph (I just love it): "John Simpson's seminar at Seybold was titled "XML Q&A: Choosing an XML Parser." His description read: "Validating or non-validating? Java-based, Perl, or C? This month we tackle the tricky issue of which parser to use for your XML applications." These are serious programming concerns. This seminar marks the death of simplicity." Do users write programs? Do they really care what parsers we use? All they need is the end result. "As all this happens, the simple nature of the Web and the Web's user-friendly character will be killed even before we see the tenth anniversary of the first GUI browser, which was released around 1993. " I don't know when the first GUI broser was released, but here are some points: How did interface change since XML and co. came into scene? We still use keyboard and mouse, touch screens etc. Do we have type or click more? Now users can get custom presentation, custom interface, custom interpretation, how friendlier can you get? This article is just another kind of bland slander against something that author doesn't understand. His position of HTML vs XML, has no relevance to the situation. In most cases XML in combination with XSLT is used to produce HTML. Where do you see the competition? It looks like cooperation to me. --- "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...> wrote: > > http://news.excite.com/news/zd/001004/10/killing-the > > This one will be believed because of the source. > He doesn't even know when GUI browsers really first > appeared. > > Len > http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard > > Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. > Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h ===== Dmitri Pavlenkov ComputerAge Inc. Ft. Myers, Florida, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - 35mm Quality Prints, Now Get 15 Free! http://photos.yahoo.com/ 
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