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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)
Tim Bray wrote:
> This is a popular view, which goes on to complain about the fact that
> the definition of XML 1.0 was purely syntactical and wish that the data
> model had come first, with lots of syntax choices. This point of view
> is wrong. XML maximizes interoperability by being defined at the syntax
> level. This was a deliberate choice based on a huge amount of experience.
>
> XLink's definition is very highly interoperable. Others are arguing
> that the penalty of having to use namespaces is too high, or that the
> semantics of actuate are either too little or too much, or that there is
> no built-in syntax remapping to do retroactive support of existing
> hypertext dialects. All these arguments are worth having. But bear in
> mind that every time you move your representation away from the
> syntactic level, you pay a severe interoperability price. Maybe in the
> case of XLink the price is worth paying (I don't think so, but can see
> the other side of the argument). -Tim
starting the discussion about what should have been first, the syntax or
the data model, probably is only a waste of bandwidth and energy, since
it is history anyway. and my original argument was not to say that i
wanted to have an xlink data model because i wanted to have multiple
syntaxes (this is just an additional benefit, in my view).
i think that once you start doing interesting and diverse things with
structured data, there must be a common understanding what is relevant
and what is not, so in summary: what is the essential content of the
data. and i think this is where the infoset started. xquery would be
impossible with only the xml syntax. dom had to made the same decisions
(though it made some of the differently).
my area of interest is linking. and if i want to do interesting things
with linking information (such as manipulating it through dom/sax,
styling it through css/xsl, querying it through xquery, accessing
linkbases through an access protocol), then i better had a data model,
or i would have to deal with all the syntactic details and peculiarities
every time i wanted to do these things.
so rather than making an argument that the infoset should have been the
mother of all xml stuff, i just wanted to point out that a data model
can be quite useful (as tim himself pointed out in another message), and
that i would be happy to have one for xlink. if people have bad feelings
about the infoset (and there seem to be very many of these people :-),
then what else should the data model look like? i honestly don't know,
and i think the infoset would be a good point to start.
cheers,
erik wilde - tel:+41-1-6325132 - fax:+41-1-6321035
mailto:net.dret@d... - http://dret.net/
computer engineering and networks laboratory
swiss federal institute of technology (eth)
* try not. do, or do not. there is no try. *
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