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Re: Partyin' like it's 1999

• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Subject: Re: Partyin' like it's 1999
• From: Eric Hanson <elh@c...>
• Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:02:12 +0000
• Cc: "'Michael Champion'" <michaelc.champion@g...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE07206889@h...>; from len.bullard@i... on Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 03:49:11PM -0500
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE07206889@h...>
• User-agent: Mutt/1.2i

Bullard, Claude L (Len) (len.bullard@i...) wrote:
> A radical suggestion:  maybe what they really need are binaries 
> and the creation of a binary specification can provide a subset 
> of what is expressible in XML.  They aren't the same, just that 
> it might be easier to create a subset outside XML The Spec.  My 
> intuition is that the shock would come from elsewhere, such as 
> new chip design or the sudden emergence of reliable telepathy. 
> (Why yes, the siddhi are real; they just aren't reliable, Sherman.)

> Of the cases presented, isn't the really gnarly one namespaces? 
> In other words, if the edges of that were tidied, how much pain 
> would go away?
> 
> Ok.  Any parties interested in posting their favorite five 
> bad problems with XML in order here?  I wonder what the 
> consensus is on the top two.  (XML, not XML apps like 
> XSD.)

1. There is no way to look up, discover and retrieve the library
of resources that support with a namespace-qualified element.
If you come across a piece of data, there may be hundreds of
supporting resources like XSL transformations, schemas, xforms,
text documentation, etc.  We need a way to link the resources to
the data.  This is the biggest problem with XML today.  XML is
this great universal data format, great, but until it has a
cooresponding supporting resource discovery mechanism, we lose
half the power of using a universal language in the first place.

This is hardly a new idea, but IMHO a greatly neglected one.  It
was proposed by Tim Bray and the XML packaging group back in
1999, the related resource packaging part anyway, but the group
was closed due to lack of interest.

http://www.textuality.com/xml/why-pkg.html
http://www.w3.org/XML/2000/07/xml-packaging-charter

2-5. I can't even think about any other XML problems until this
exists.  It's so fundamental and obvious it blows my mind that
it doesn't.

Eric

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Partyin' like it's 1999
    • From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: Partyin' like it's 1999
    • From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>

• References:
  • RE: Partyin' like it's 1999
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>

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