[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] SGML97 Europe
I've just come back from SGML97 in Barcelona and thought some personal comments might be useful. Firstly I was delighted to meet SGML geekdom in the flesh :-) It's marvellous finding so many people who were hitherto virtual. I came away with a strong feeling of community, and many thanks to everyone who made me welcome. Without question, XML was the major theme at the meeting, though associated areas such as DSSSL were also causing a lot of interest. The ERB has done a fantastic job in getting this done so efficiently, quickly, and also making sure that the world knew how important this was. It's now very clear that the major WWW-related companies are taking a very active role in exploring the potential of XML, and a recent posting to XML-WG has confirmed Netscape's interest. [The XML-spec printing was sponsored by SUN and Microsoft.] I think most people who are not used to virtual working will underestimate how much time the ERB has spent on the process. As Eliot Kimber said in his closing address, they had to choose between having a family life or an XML-life. There were literally hundreds of mails a week. NOTE: all mail on the XML-WG gets read very thoroughly by the ERB - even if it doesn't get formally answered at the time. It's only necessary to make a point once. The ERB supplemented e-mail with weekly conference phone calls, and this is how decisions were taken. Quite apart from XML itself, I personally commend the efficiency of the ERB's virtual process and shall try to abstract from it those aspects which make it successful. Clear initial guidelines help, and a wider community which is well versed in abiding by a standard drawn up under legal guidance :-) Other points. XML clearly fills many different roles for different people. It's clear that people who sell complex SGML applications see different benefits (and some concerns) from those who see XML as the next step from HTML. Taking too narrow a view might sometimes cause unnecessary conflicts. Eliot described XML's position vis-a-vis SGML as low-cost/low-benefit versus high-cost/high-benefit and stressed the need for the additional components such as DSSSL, architectural forms, etc. (Personally I would put XML as lowish-cost/medium-benefit :-) It's important not to argue HTML vs XML or XML vs SGML as such arguments are often meaningless or based on limited views. Both DTD-less and DTD-full applications will benefit from XML. The *use* of XML falls in a spectrum with fuzzy borderlines. It's clear that DSSSL has a great deal of impetus and the only question is whether the ERB can work fast enough for everyone else's expectations. There many other problems surfacing. How does XML interact with HTML? (are there XML plug-ins, should XML DTDs contain subsets of HTML, etc.) Strong typing, and APIs (both areas that XML-DEV could work on). And perhaps most excitingly for some of us the concept of Information Objects which was mentioned in several talks. My understanding of information objects (which has been designed into CML) is that documents will frequently contain 'chunks' from several different sources. For example chemistry papers frequently contain maths; but there is no formal syntax for combining two different DTDs in the same document (watch this space...). IMO a robust DTD-less XML document will most likely be an aggregation of well-defined information objects (i.e. individually parsable against a DTD), but where every document would be likely to have a differing formal DTD. It's clear that XML is able to greatly widen the market for *ML. Since *ML will increasingly be co-existing with Object technologies it's important that the applications are well designed and interoperate cleanly. One great benefit of *ML is that people who deal with documents can understand the power of *ML, whilst they might well 'switch off' when confronted with objects. Implementation is also very rapid - many companies have - or shortly will have - XML implementations. This will have high benefits - let's also push for low prices :-). It's becoming even more important that this group helps to create reference sites with test data, DTDs, etc. so that these tools can be evaluated. Once again, a lovely time. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection Virtual School of Molecular Sciences http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To unsubscribe, send to majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe xml-dev List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@i...)
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