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Re: [SUMMARY #1] Why is there little usage of XML on the 'visi

• To: "XML Developers List" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: [SUMMARY #1] Why is there little usage of XML on the 'visible Web'?
• From: peter murray-rust <pm286@c...>
• Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:20:08 +0100
• In-reply-to: <B8415163A689094689542C617ECA0366E03F8C@I...>
• References: <B8415163A689094689542C617ECA0366E03F8C@I...>

At 21:00 21/07/2006, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
>Hi Folks,
>
>Once again, many thanks for your outstanding comments.  Below I have 
>tried to recap the core assertions.  I am sure that many of the 
>assertions could be worded better or more precisely.  Please let me 
>know.  And as always, I welcome your critique of the assertions.  /Roger
>

Roger,
Many thanks indeed for catalyzing this discussion which I think has 
the possibility to lead to practical advances. I shall make a 
practical suggestion in a separate post

I don't agree with your distinction between visible and hidden web. 
Henry Rzepa and I have argued that (at least for scientific 
communication) a single XML document should be used to represent the 
information and should be repurposed for sighted humans, unsighted 
humans and machines as required; We call this XML a "datument": See 
http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/Murray-Rust/ (peer-reviewed 
Open Access article)

>ASSERTION #1<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = 
>"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>
>There is little usage of XML on the visible Web.  That is, the 
>information available to the end user (or his/her browser) is 
>primarily in the form of (X)HTML, not XML.
>
>ASSERTION #2
>
>XML is not appropriate for the visible Web.  XML will continue to 
>have limited usage on the visible Web.  As Len Bullard says, "XML is 
>plumbing".

For us XML is *not* plumbing. It is a means of representing a 
community's semantics and vocabulary (CML has over 100 elements and 
200 attributes). It is therefore particularly appropriate where 
communities exist, and I see this especially in STM - 
Science/Technical/Medical. We are working closely with publishers who 
are interested in publishing XML/CML directly and we expect some 
first examples RSN. While I accept that the main current purpose of 
the Web is for large organisations to use it to further their 
business (political or commercial), there is a sizeable remainder in 
numeric terms of people who wish to develop the Web as a means for 
communicating ideas in machine-processable form beyond HTML.



Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics
University of Cambridge,
Lensfield Road,  Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069 

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    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>

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