[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: power uses of XML vs. simple uses of XML
The level of application potential and the level of application requirement vary, of course. Understand that originally, many SGML applications were aimed at a user that was NOT a programmer. During this period, it was easy to see that even the least power required a lot of skill and insight. So, SGML gained a reputation for complexity and obscurity on one end of the spectrum of users, and of simplicity and obscurity on the other end. WYSIWYG gained in popularity because while it was not particularly flexible, it along with the advent of laser printers was powerful enough to do the job at hand: printing. Remember, before 1988, few people talked about the concepts that would become B2B, then enterprise engineering, CALS, PDES, and so forth. These people realized quickly that it would not be possible to ever achieve the levels of integration needed based on WYSIWYG and simple relational systems. They pressed on into harder to implement concepts, some of which were not economically realizable outside the black programs and politically impossible. They had to do that while enduring the ridicule of being called "the left wing lunatic fringe of SGML" by those who not only did not understand the advantages, they simply wanted their funding. Sometimes, the theorists and adventurers have to go ahead and create what they think will work cognizant of the fact that by the time an imminent well-funded requirement emerges, it may be years later and there will be different names on the specifications. That is a hard and bitter pill, but it is the case. NASA has been working on ion engines since the mid sixties. Only in the 90s did we finally see a working engine and no one who worked on that team was an inventor of the technology, the concepts, just the implementations. It was not pleasant to look at the gathered moguls of Lockheed Martin some years ago and tell them that after a decade of IETM research, all of the project money spent, and all the reputations justly earned, that they would have to put most of it away and go with web technology until it had the power of the systems they already had running and for sale. It was necessary because now a bigger, less technical community had emerged and the community could not absorb the complexity or cost of these more powerful systems but the economic justification of recruiting from their ranks outweighed the local economies of better systems. There are other ways to do what XML does. There are other ways to do most of what is done in computer science applications. We pick the ones that make the most sense with regards to resource and requirements and move on. Every two decades you will repeat most of the developments of the decade before those at a larger scale. Ask any black bluesman about rock. We have to do that; that is the learning that is fed back and amplified, reinforced, and broadcast. It is pop culture and pop techology reflected in art and in claw hammers. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] I occasionally hear claims that "they just don't understand", but I think there's something a lot deeper than that going on. What exactly, I'm not sure, but I suspect that practice will differ from best practice will differ from specification in a lot of unexpected ways over the next few years, and likely because of this disconnect. *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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