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RE: more namespace abuse

• From: Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@A...>
• To: 'John Cowan' <jcowan@r...>,Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@A...>
• Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:03:02 -0800

The page doesn't claim to be about XML? Well, what about this statement:

  Note  
  This namespace declaration mechanism supported by Internet Explorer is
based on the W3C Namespaces in XML 

I guess they are using a pretty liberal interpretation of the word "based".
Perhaps I have overreacted and made an overstatement. But I have also had to
grapple with numerous incompatibilities with Microsoft's tools where they
are not complying with the specs they helped develop (and have run into a
brick wall trying to report some of these issues as "bugs" to Microsoft).
You get a bit thin-skinned over this stuff after awhile.

Quite apart from this, I don't see any problem with criticizing the manner
in which they push proprietary extensions when they are still doing a poor
job of supporting the relevant specs. For those of us who have tried to
implement tools with broad interoperability in mind, having to contend with
this sort of behavior from such an influential vendor is exasperating.

Quite apart from that, there are many novice developers who get lead astray
by stuff like this. I often find postings on xml related lists from
developers asking about why their XML Schema isn't working with vendor X's
XML parser, and then they show a sample of their schema and it's XDR. Look
through MSDN, and you'll find numerous examples of XDR being presented as
"XML Schema".

I don't think I'm being too harsh. And maybe if people were harsher, and
berated Microsoft more over this, they'd stop misleading novice developers,
and make a more sincere effort to support relevant standards. I know they've
got smart people there who have made valuable contributions to web
standards. If Microsoft walked the talk, I'd have no complaints.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 3:51 PM
> To: Michael Brennan
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re: more namespace abuse
> 
> 
> Michael Brennan wrote:
> 
> 
> > It's so very sad to see that there are people there at Microsoft who
> > understand very well the issues, who know very well the 
> right thing to do,
> > who even helped shape the relevant standards. And yet, when 
> it comes to
> > actual shipping products, we see such utter, complete contempt from
> > Microsoft for these standards it helped define.
> 
> This response is really over the top.  This is about an *extension* to
> HTML, inspired by XML, yes, but *not* XML.  I yield to no one in my
> enthusiasm for MS-bashing, but this really isn't a proper case at all.
> 
> This page does not claim to be about XML.
> 
> This page does not claim to be about W3C-conformant HTML.
> 
> It's just another vendor extension.  Relax, please, everyone.
> 
> -- 
> There is / one art             || John Cowan 
> <jcowan@r...>
> no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
> to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein
> 

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