[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Father of XML?
In Jon Bosak's own words (excerpted from ZapThink's Pros and Cons of XML article (www.zapthink.com/reports/proscons.html): "Like many of my colleagues in industry, I had learned the hard way that nothing substantially less powerful than SGML was going to work over the long run. So from the very earliest days of the World Wide Web Consortium, there was a small group of us who kept saying, "You have to put SGML on the web. HTML just won't work for the kinds of things we've been doing in industry." Now, the people in charge of the W3C were far from ignorant about SGML. Dan Connolly, in particular, saw very early the need to standardize HTML itself as a proper SGML language, and by the beginning of 1996, he had created a placeholder for some future SGML work within the W3C. But W3C didn't have the resources to pursue this direction, and outside of the few of us who had already been through the development of large-scale electronic publishing systems, no one else really understood the problem. I had been pestering W3C about SGML and about DSSSL, the SGML stylesheet language, right from the beginning, while I was still working at Novell, and I kept this up after I went to work for Sun. Finally, in early May of 1996, Dan challenged me to put Sun's money where my mouth was -- to organize and lead a W3C working group to put SGML on the web. This was an unprecedented offer, because up until then, all W3C working groups had been organized and run by W3C staff. Dan's willingness to go beyond established practice was the first key development in the process that led to XML. Dan's offer came just as I was beginning a three-week series of WWW, SGML, and ISO conferences in Europe. This tour put me in touch with just about everyone I needed to talk to about the idea, and by the time I got back home, I had managed to recruit some of the world's leading SGML experts for the "Web SGML" initiative and had secured funding from my management at Solaris Global Engineering and Information Services to carry out the work. This was the second critical turn in the path to XML. Many people know that XML grew out of the expertise of the SGML community, but few people realize even today that the whole two-year effort to develop XML was organized, led, and underwritten by Sun. It was obvious from the beginning of what was originally called the Web SGML Activity (the name XML was suggested by our technical lead, SGML/DSSSL guru James Clark, several months later) that it would need the support of at least one of the two major vendors of web browsers. In June of 1996 I succeeded in persuading Jean Paoli of Microsoft to join the working group. This turned out to be especially important, because in addition to his SGML expertise, Jean was eventually able to convince Microsoft to adopt the technology. The basic design of XML was accomplished in eleven weeks of feverish activity under the guidance of editors Tim Bray and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen. The work started in the last few days of August 1996, and ended with the release of the first XML draft at the SGML '96 conference in November. While it took another year to finish working out all the details, virtually every basic feature of XML as we know it today was specified in that first published draft. This remarkable achievement is a tribute to the team spirit and world-class expertise of the original design group. I am proud to have had the honor of leading this group and proud of my management at Sun for having had the vision to underwrite the effort. " *** In Charles Goldfarb's own words from "The XML Handbook" by Charles F. Goldfarb and Paul Prescod (ok, so this may be self serving, but serves as a good reference point.) Preface, Page xli: "I invented SGML, I'm proud of it, and I'm awed that such a staggering volume of the world's mission-critical information is represented in it. I'm also proud of XML. I'm proud of my friend Jon Bosak who made it happen, and I'm excited that the World Wide Web is becoming XML-based." ----- Ron Schmelzer Senior Analyst ZapThink, LLC XML Industry Analysts www.zapthink.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Fitzgerald" <mike@w...> To: "xml-dev" <xml-dev@l...> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 8:41 PM Subject: Father of XML? > I got flyer in the mail from SYS-CON. On the cover, it claims that Charles > Goldfarb is the "father of XML." With all due respect to Mr. Goldfarb, I > read last year that Jon Bosak was bequethed that title. Who gets the title? > Is that a fair question or should I head for cover now? > > Mike > ==== > Wy'east Communications http://www.wyeast.net mailto:mike@w... > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> > > The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > > To unsubscribe from this elist send a message with the single word > "unsubscribe" in the body to: xml-dev-request@l... >
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|