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Re: What is XML For?

• To: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
• Subject: Re: What is XML For?
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 09:38:30 -0700
• Cc: "'The Deviants'" <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <001301c27e33$c775e760$6a31812f@mooncat> <E186bVZ-0006SU-00@c...> <3DBF3321.9090407@p...> <E186qBb-0001R3-00@c...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

I've spent too long on this so I'm only going to address a few small issues.

Alaric B. Snell wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 October 2002 01:17, Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> That's a different issue entirely. That's an argument for having standard 
> interfaces to data rather than anything to do with power. He's confusing 
> programming languages with data description languages. No site sends you 
> weather information in the form of a Java applet!

When people (like TBlanchard) say they want to send "smart objects" 
rather than "dumb data" this is precisely what they are proposing. Not 
"applets" but Java or Smalltalk objects. And it is because they don't 
understand the POLP.

> ... They'd have to compile it 
> up again each time the weather changed! 

No they wouldn't. An object is a merger of data and behaviour. The data 
is typically joined with the behaviour on the recipient side.

>...
> And what does this have to do with the power of Scheme vs. XSLT?

Scheme versus _schema languages_ (including DTDs) and pointer languages 
and CSS. Not Scheme vs. XSLT.

 >...
> Now while the RDF weather data can be converted into a Java applet, the Java 
> applet can't be converted back into RDF weather data without a human to 
> reverse engineer it, wherein the problem lies.

Exactly. And people convert the "data" that is a schema or a CSS 
stylesheet into all kinds of crazy forms all of the time (diagrams, 
GUIs, code, sample files, etc.). They couldn't do that if the schema 
language and stylesheet language were just Lisp code.

>...
> 
> SVG's the first reasonable vector format I've seen suggested for the 
> Interweb, though, quite independant of anything to do with it being XML...

You're welcome to your opinion but it is nevertheless the case that SVG 
directly and explicitly builds upon:

  * XML
  * XML Namespaces
  * XLink
  * CSS
  * SMIL (another XML vocabulary, which animates XML documents)
  * DTDs and Schemas
  * DOM API

I don't doubt that you could make another language that didn't use these 
features of the XML family but it would not really be anything like SVG. 
You can see applications using _all_ of these features together here:

  * http://www.kevlindev.com/games/

  Paul Prescod

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: tblanchard@m...
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: Alaric Snell <alaric@a...>

• References:
  • RE: What is XML For?
    • From: "Martin Soukup" <martin@d...>
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>

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