[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: [Fwd: Defining "public interfaces" in specifications]
Elliot, I fully agree. The extensibility of XML is meant to be in the linguistic productions possible due to different grammars, not different syntaxes (morphology). The work I've seen in integrating different network management protocols directly from their SNMP MIBs is, to me, proof that this extensibility is as real as the promise. Changing the syntax, or allowing the syntax to change, is just asking for trouble. The whole benefit of XML is that when you modify versions of the grammar spec, or your application, things can still work to some reasonable level. This is like if someone starts using a slightly different grammar in your spoken language, you will likely understand most of what they say. But not if they completely change the sounds they speak. IMO, Martin J. Soukup XML Evangelist Nortel Networks, Ottawa, Canada At 9:31 AM +0100 10/27/02, Eric van der Vlist wrote: >I do think that the current situation is a disaster for extensibility. > I think XML 1.0 was designed to be extensible at the markup level. I think it's succeeded very well in that respect. Just look at the plethora of vocabularies out there. That's what the X in XML is about. I think that quite wisely XML 1.0 was not designed to be extensible at the syntax level, and I feel that efforts to change or extend the syntax are contrary to the spirit of XML, will lead to significant confusion, and cause interoperability problems. SGML is extensible at the syntax level, including the ability to change character sets and even change which characters delimit tags. Those few applications that truly need this level of extensibility should consider using SGML instead of XML. -- +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer | +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002) | | http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/ | | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ | | Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
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