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RELAX NG is a solid piece of work, thanks mostly to the ideas and hard work of James Clark, Murata-san, and also I think Kawaguchi-san. I think it is elegant because it is so intuitive and nicely composable. You just have fewer things to forget. It is also very implementable, I believe, given the leg up (formal semantics, source code and algorithms) for coders provided mostly by Clark, Murata-san, and Kawaguchi-san. I have written a number of XML Schema and RELAX NG schemata by hand that match identical instances. The RELAX NG schemata took considerably less time to compose than the XML Schema schemata. (Another interesting exercise is converting such schema into an instance by hand.) But not everybody wants to do this kind of work. Eventually, I think schema composition will be well hidden from the common user. So why does RELAX NG matter, if all the rigor is to be hidden under a point-and-click interface? RELAX NG matters because it has merit. People who really have to do this kind of work cannot deny that RELAX NG has merit. So I am quite confident RELAX NG will survive and evolve and grow. I owe it to the people I work with and for to let them know the good things about RELAX NG. I have found very little to complain about. It was a little TC that put it together. The process was not bogged down with requests or demands from vendors to have this or that feature jammed in. The mantra was "simple, simple, simple" because the main contributors -- the aforementioned triumvirate -- held the line. They knew that simplicity with intelligence is something the people who do the real work would appreciate. It is not for everyone I guess, but I think of RELAX NG and the tools to process it -- all free -- as a boon. The more I use it, the more I appreciate it. It has not flourished yet. It may take a good deal of time. But it has a solid foundation that I believe will not shatter under pressure. Mike
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