First, balance of powers. It isn't us vs them, black or white,
good
or evil, etc. It is balance: ensuring that no
group or consortia be empowered to act such that
the
interests of human culture are in peril because they
can
act hastily or without sound reason. It sounds
dramatic, I know, but it is really the tedious details
of
how law and technology interact by consent.
Second, we can't toss words like "standards" into these
discussions unless they have meaning. What
do
we say to those who think SAX should be a
W3C-owned and maintained product? What would
that
help? Do those who originally developed it
but
are not W3C members have rights? If so, what
are
they? Lots of open-list works gets carried off
into
members-only groups. Well-meaning people
enlist the support of organizations whose policies
and
worse, controls, they don't understand. In
some
cases, controls they cannot or will not see.
Don't take my position in a largely theoretical argument
as a
like or dislike. This isn't personal and
those
who
want to make it personal are simply thanked
for
their input. I think it important to explore these
relationships down that twisty road because otherwise
we
find ourselves accepting the opinions of the press,
the
pundits, and others (me included, so I accept the
risks to debate this from an unpopular position).
Because XML is being used to code and
preserve very
large chunks of the world's
information assets, care is warranted in how it is
designed, created and changed. The Blueberry affair
pushes certain issues to the surface. When for
example, should an organization be allowed to limit
the
character sets if such limitations would make
cultural assets (eg, the famous Buddhist texts)
disappear? Do the consortia have responsibilities
for
such things? If not, should SGML, an international
standard, be maintained assiduously to ensure in
such
cases, the owners of that information have
another way to maintain it and still make it available?
I
have lobbied for the update and improvement of
SGML. I've done it for years. I consider it the
jewel for which XML is a setting. It does deserve
a
bit or polishing now and then.
Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
Ekam sat.h, Vipraah
bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
Hey
Len..
<question>
Don't take this
the wrong way, please...
What exactly,
then, are you doing developing XML standards?
</question>
<re-phrase>
What is it
about XML that holds your interests and keeps you from lobbying the ISO
daily to "fix" and update SGML?
</re-phrase>
<statement
of opinion>
A casual reader
might think that you don't like OR enjoy using and/or developing
XML....
</statement
of opinion>
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