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RE: RE: Stupid Question

• To: 'Mike Champion' <mc@x...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: RE: Stupid Question
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 15:09:31 -0600

Not at all.  Well-formedness is how IADS worked long 
before XML was even a proposal.  It even had SGML-coded 
stylesheets. That's just SGML As Practiced.  It didn't 
matter if XML took off.  Markup of some format would 
still be the way to go because in a loosely coupled 
distributed system, data objects work better.  People 
had already tried to use OOPs for messages and that 
didn't work because interoperability was not achieved. 
Remember, the SGML hypertext world was intensely 
experimental and most solutions had been tried.

The XML party was started by people from the print world 
with the exceptions of Kimber, deRose, Durand and ...???. 
There were database folks in there too, but not many
hypertext experts until the WG was formed.  Then it was 
a really big party.
 
The hypertext SGMLers were already doing this stuff.  
We just fought over scrolling vs framing and whether 
hyperlinks should be one way or n way, that sort of thing. 
DSSSL fought HyTime and everyone fought FOSIs although 
they sort of worked.   What the web said, and Paul is right 
about this, is This Is What An Address Looks Like.  Had 
it stayed there, it would have been jake.  Instead, they 
sprinted into the philosophical bog of universal identifiers.
 
All one does is make the DTD/Schema optional.  That is 
obvious.  Using instance syntax for schemas and inserting 
hidden values into the output, those would have been 
controversial to SGMLers.  The first would be considered an 
application language just as it is now and the second 
would have been a fight in the ESIS committees (what 
is the output of the parse, what to do with #FIXED 
values, where to define the semantics of fixed values, 
etc. --- iow, same as now as Gavin just pointed out.)

XML is less than SGML.  That was the idea, wasn't it? 
The problem, as predicted then, was that more would 
be needed.  We knew that from day one.  

Is that "more" XML or just XML application language 
infrastructure?  Consider that sending an XML Schema 
in-band is just sending an application layer representation 
with an instance of that application.  No big deal.  
Just more data objects somewhat like VRML protos.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@x...]

3/5/2002 3:37:12 PM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...> wrote:

>Ummm... what's the difference in in-bandness in 
>the instance vs just requiring a schema of some kind to 
>travel with the document, other than that puts one back 
>in SGMLLand pretty solidly?

Hmmm ... interesting point.  Having a travelling schema
would address my original concern.

>We do seem to work a lot to preserve well-formed options.

Well, well-formedness brought us to the party, IMHO.  We
would be a lonely group of SGMLers whining about the incompatibilities
between Word and HTML, and CORBA and DCOM, and wishing that the
world would just take a sip of our KoolAid -- XML would have
never "taken off" without the WF "foot in the door."  I suspect
you disagree :~)

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