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At 01:40 PM 5/8/01 +0200, Anderson, John wrote: >Wasn't the whole point of XML to remove diversity so we could all join >hands and dance together as one big happy web enabled platform independent >family? > >Or am I oversimplifying things a bit . . . That's an interesting question. My usual answer is that XML 1.0 removed syntactic diversity, letting us use each others's tools and share information without worrying about byte-level issues, much as TCP/IP provides a foundation on which other network applications can build. On the vocabulary and meaning levels, however, I'd suggest that it does the reverse. While some see standardization of those levels as the next big task of XML, I think there's a much more exciting opportunity for programmers and users to represent information in the forms they find most convenient to their particular circumstances. That would mean an explosion of diversity (vocabularies) in a much smaller set of circumstances (as XML replaces thousands of other possible base formats). As for joining hands, I think it'll be a long while! Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly & 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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