• From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
• To: "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:28:05 +0100

Hi Simon,

Le lundi 11 février 2008 à 16:38 -0500, Simon St.Laurent a écrit :

> As with XML, the imprimatur of some standards organization would be very 
> helpful in spreading this simplification.

Yes, I think that this would be most useful.

I have written an article [1] (sorry, it's in French and it is long
enough that I am not sure to find the time to translate it) in which the
last sections cover what I have called a "quest for perfection" which, I
think, is necessary not only for aesthetics but because some of the
flaws that we've considered minor in XML 1.0 and associated specs
represent a risk to see XML rejected as a whole.

[1] http://xmlfr.org/actualites/decid/080210-0001
[2] http://xmlfr.org/actualites/decid/080210-0001#N669

Now, that would be tough is to define a subset on which a reasonable
part of the XML stack can build.

When people say "XML is hard", they usually do not mean "XML 1.0 is
hard" but "XML 1.0 + namespaces in XML + XPath + DOM + XSLT + W3C XML
Schema + XML Base + xml:id + XInclude + XPointer + ... is hard" and the
proportion of criticism that goes to XML 1.0 itself is usually pretty
low. In other words, I don't think that subsetting only XML 1.0 (or even
only XML 1.0 + namespaces) would be very useful.

That means that you should probably cleanup the most basic pieces (XML
1.0 + namespaces in XML + XML Base + xml:id) and provide a kind of
"specifications profiles" explaining how the upper pieces can safely and
sanely be selected and used together.

This also means that you'd have to debate over highly controversial
stuff such as namespaces and schema languages.

My 0,02 €

Eric
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Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
(ISO) RELAX NG   ISBN:0-596-00421-4 http://oreilly.com/catalog/relax
(W3C) XML Schema ISBN:0-596-00252-1 http://oreilly.com/catalog/xmlschema
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