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RE: intertwined specs

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 13:03:41 -0500

At 11:24 AM 2/16/01 -0600, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>No.  I'd be unnerved if that weren't happening.
>It would mean the specs are incantations for
>magical events.

Well, let's put it another way.  Three years ago, the W3C published a 
document which listed these goals:
1. XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
2. XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
3. XML shall be compatible with SGML.
4. It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
5. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute 
minimum, ideally zero.
6. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
7. The XML design should be prepared quickly.
8. The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
9. XML documents shall be easy to create.
10. Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.

I think it's reasonable to suggest that XML - read broadly as the then XML 
family of specs - lived up to that in 1998.  I think most of those, except 
perhaps 2, 10, and maybe 9, don't apply to the current and developing XML 
family of specs.

For those of us who really savored the goals above, I'm not sure this 
qualifies as progress. (And no, XML 1.0 hasn't changed much, but 'XML' has.)

Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books

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