[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: SGML On The Web
To understand some of it, look at the lists of the decision makers and discover how many of them: 1. Were actually involved in creating a markup-based hypertext browser (only a handful). 2. Were experienced with a hypertext browser, markup or not, before HTML (a goodly number. IADS, EBT, etc. had been around awhile and SoftQuad had already licensed a browser). BTW: independent links (ilinks) what you now call out-of-line links, had been implemented for at least two of these systems and what you now call simple links but were then context links (clinks), for more. 3. Were actively creating formatting engines based on DSSSL (say James with Bosak fronting) 4. Were actively creating engines for relational databases (say Tim, maybe others). 5. Knew HTTP like Genesis chapter one ("In the beginning"). A small minority. The majority of SGMLers were not network experts and the real breakthroughs that led to the web were network designs for HTTP, not markup. The Web is HTTP. Markup is an afterthought. PDF proved it not to be necessary. Everyone that I remember working the project understood HTML. HTML is a no-brainer. That is why it works so well for those who need that sort of thing and why it will never die because there is an endless and ever renewing supply of web newbies. It ain't a crime; it is the birthrate at work. SGML would have worked ok but we still would have tossed out features and done away with subdocs. All of the markup hypertext engines I was aware of had simplified SGML already. DSSSL was way too complicated and HyTime was too obscure and had enemies from all camps. That is why the syntax spec got all the momentum. It was SGML-- the bit everyone had in common. That was the easy bit . Even that took a lot of wrangling because agendas surfaced and some were implacable (the one that kept me up nights was 'Kill all the DTDs'). What you have been lamenting ever since is the common web framework design. It can't go forward fast because of HTML. The model is set, the software has shipped, the mindsets have gelled, and the kudzu has infested. Things will improve but ever so slowly because if you've ever farmed over kudzu, you know it can only be killed an acre or so at a time over several seasons if you don't want to also poison the ground. Because of HTML, we have essentially a one client world and most of what XML does well, works on the client. The backend is middle-ware mediated adaptors to what are mostly relational db servers. So the action is in the access layer and the client. The client is frozen in the "won't give up HTML until they pry it from our dead cold fingers", so that leaves the access layer. len
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