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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Why a "general" solution? (was: RE: XML Binary Characteriz
 1. Interop is system to system. The web is not one system. It is a federation of systems. Not all of them interoperate. I am not afraid of solutions in the wild if they solve wild problems. I am very much afraid of solutions in the normative sense that only weakly address specific problems. 2. Best practices are captured but must also be applied where applicable, not in general. 3. Reuse of solutions is available as applicable. 4. XML can be improved, but I don't believe an alternative format or encoding does that. It offers alternatives to XML that can be processed by some XML systems. Because our definitions for XML systems are weak and not always consonant, we don't have the clarity needed. Because applications and application languages differ (eg, XML Schema), we can only improve them on a case by case basis. The current basis for XML-system wide interoperability is XML 1.0 and 1.1. If we add a generalized binary encoding, there are no guarantees that we will improve interoperability; we might in fact, more than double our chances of compromising that. Or worse. Today, X3D has both the XML encoding and the VRML Classic encoding with the implicit requirement to support VRML97. Tim Bray and I both predicted there would be problems with that, and unfortunately, we were right. As we add an X3D binary, I expect these to get worse. I would hate to see such problems go XML language space-wide. Seems like an awful lot of pain if the payoffs aren't ten fold. If we follow this to a logical conclusion, I think we will end up with a binary-design toolkit, not a single binary. len From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob@w...] Claude L Bullard wrote: > The case is made for some applications using a binary. > The case is not made for it being generalized. We should address the general issue of binary alternative in order to: 1. Ensure and encourage interop 2. To allow capturing "best practices" 2. Permit and encourage reuse of solutions 3. Improve XML, XML Schema, etc. The highest priority should be to encourage interop. Today, people who are driven to a binary format (for whatever reason) are left to their own devices and have little guidance concerning the quality of XML alternatives or what may be best practices for using them. We can't prevent binary solutions from being used. What we should do is whatever is necessary to ensure that those binary solutions don't compromise interop. For instance, this thread has raised a number of issues or dangers concerning binary formats. There is a concern that conversion of floating types might cause damage or that signatures might be invalidated on conversion to binary. Thus, what we need is a document that can say things like: 1. Beware of certain type conversions. Watch for pattern facets, etc. that may require preservation of lexical elements such as leading and trailing zeros or leading "+". 2. When handling a signed XML document or element, use X.finfo, not X.fws, in order to ensure that it can be faithfully reconstruction of the signed content." 3. etc... It would be massively more useful if the current statements such as: "Don't use an alternative since it might cause problem X." were reworded to say: "If you use an alternative, ensure that X does not occur." Capturing this guidance would be generally useful no matter which binary format is used or even if the alternative format is, like XML, text based. It should also be noted that if the XML community actually faces seriously the issues of interop with alternatives, we might discover or highlight some areas of XML that are underspecified or that could be improved. For instance, providing an easier to use mechanism for specifying which optional lexical elements of numberic types need be preserved might improve XML interop independent of any consideration of binary alternatives. bob wyman 
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