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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: experts
 writes: I'm pondering the term 'invited expert' and what it really means. Simon, You use the term "expert" as if that was some mono-dimensional property. Yet the work of the W3C is multi-dimensional and is based (implicitly) on the shakey premise that an aggregation of domain experts produces a desirable result. To confuse a technically viable result with a "desirable" result is a mistake, in my view. A desirable result, in my view, goes far beyond the narrow confines of technical competence or viability. But discussion of those issues would probably take me seriously off-topic for this list, so I will desist. Those who produced XML 1.0 were in some sense domain experts but their expertise in choosing an appropriate name was, I suggest, neither established nor, when one examines the resulting acronym, particularly accurate. Is XML a "language"? Or is it a meta-language? If XML had been called Extensible Markup Meta Language (XMML) we might have been on more accurate ground. But, peering more closely, is XML really extensible? If XML allows an essentially infinite number of element names in what way is it "extensible" in the way that it is often hyped to be? In practice, of course, there would have been major problems in defining *any* term which adequately and accurately represented what XML is to a wider audience. But, I guess, the temptation having "passed off" one inaccurate term is to pay scant attention to precision of terminology in other contexts. The muddle at W3C (or, more precisely, in W3C documents) about what is and isn't "XSL" is a case in point (see my recent post to the list). The broader point is that a domain expertise in markup languages, however defined, does not automatically translate into an ability to communicate either accurately or consistently. ... I guess that failure of communication keeps the author of XML books in business, so maybe it isn't wholly a bad thing. <grin/> <big snip> Maybe it's time for experts to let users figure out what they need. There is an irony in this. When the result of e-business is an arguably unprecedented customer focus, we find a centralised committee (or series of committees) of experts deciding what the user needs or wants. I wonder if the "centralised planning" approach will endure in this context when, viewed in the broad sweep of history, it has failed in so many others. Regards Andrew Watt 
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