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RE: XML Schema becomes a W3C Recommendation

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 10:30:59 -0500

True, but timing has a lot to do with when something 
takes off like a rocket.  The momentum 
to get XML 1.0 done was built up over a period 
of time among people who well understood 
what SGML did and mostly were learning 
hypertext and others who knew both but 
had to wait until the momentum was there, 
then had to ditch well-developed work to 
ride the wave.   It is not unlike what 
is about to happen in VRML and probably 
will happen as XMI, RDF and other 
SemanticWebish things battle for position.
  
Someone eventually figures out the 
lowest common denominator and does 
that, gives it to the unwashed, 
then all of the former scoundrels and 
rebels find themselves being the "establishment" 
defending the status quo.

Simple comparisons of XML 1.0 and 
XML Schemas origins just don't 
work for making predictions.  XML Schemas 
ARE tough to do for lots of reasons, some
having nothing to do with the language 
design itself.    Yet, schemas are  
workable expressions for contract 
communications and I think they have a 
purpose there.  This *will* be an interesting 
test of W3C clout.

For something to take off, the market has 
to be ready for it and some niche 
community has to have it ready.  See 
Von Braun and the Moon Race.  See SGML 
and the WWW.  In both cases, a niche 
group had a technology that a public 
group needed right when it was needed. 
Chasm crossing requires bridge builders 
who first know how to descend and climb 
cliffs with heavy loads on their backs. 
They don't credit the bridge designer; 
they credit the senator who got the funding.

"Eat a peach" as the poet wrote.

The danger for schemas?  In my opinion, stated before, 
the more features one adds to make a data 
object declaration language work or feel 
like an object-oriented programming language, 
the more one has screwed the markup pooch. 
Leave programming to programming languages. 
Keep semantics OUT of the markup. 

But I welcome the announcement.  It is time 
to do some work in non-W3C, non-standard, 
just business domains and we needed this 
piece.  

"Thanks for all the fish."

Len 

http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 8:56 PM
To: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re: XML Schema becomes a W3C Recommendation


I wrote:
>XML 1.0 wasn't all about jettisoning features, and it took off like a
rocket.

Bah.  Should have been:

XML 1.0 was all about jettisoning features, and it took off like a rocket.

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