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Re: SGML on the Web

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: SGML on the Web
• From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
• Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 19:57:51 +0100
• In-reply-to: <3D9DDFD3.6070204@t...> (message from Tim Bray on Fri,04 Oct 2002 11:37:07 -0700)
• References: <r01050300-1015-F87D38B6D7BB11D6A3790003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]> <3D9DDFD3.6070204@t...>

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> XML directly on the Web seems to have fallen victim to the notion that
> XML needed a transformative style approach, missing the easy opportunity
> that CSS provided for document display and requiring people to use XSLT.
> That notion has also provided Microsoft with plenty of cover for their
> (non-)approach to XML in the browser, which may have successfully kept
> XML off the ordinary Web.



Much as it pains me to support Microsoft I'd take exactly the oposite
view here. I'd say that XML-on-the-web is distinctly uninteresting
without a transformation language. My XML _never_ looks just like
the presentation (for simple documents where that could be the case I'd
just use (x)html anyway).

So you require client side XSLT, until relatively recently that has only
really worked in IE so in fact IE is a very capabable XML browser.
Far from MicroSoft having a non-approach to XML in the browser, whether they
like it or not they have a credible aproach. It could do with some
tweaks, such as the default stylesheet doing something different with
xhtml namespace but these are relatively minor issues.
The XSLT in mozilla and Netscape is now fortunately (at last) fairly
robust (if not particularly fast) so we can finally put xml on the web
with a reasonable chance that someone with a "new enough" browser can 
handle the thing. Of course not all browsers and platform are there yet
but its early days: NS 7's only been out a couple of months or so in a
full release, I still hope other systems will support this in the future.

As more clients become available I hope we will see more xslt styled
xml on the web. Docbook for example...

David


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