[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: RE: SGML On The Web
Len writes: > 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. I think you're recapitulating the same mistake that I described in my previous message here, seeing HTML as the enemy, not as something of value separate from "more advanced" perspectives. There are an awful lot of Web developers who are quite frustrated by HTML. Working in HTML for any period of time, especially up close, leaves most developers wanting something more. We've had various solutions - Dynamic HTML, Flash, CSS, and XML. The ones which have caught on are the ones which integrate most easily with HTML - CSS and scripting in the forefront. While Flash is widely available, it's a fairly different toolkit, and I don't believe Flash is likely to take over the Web whatever Macromedia's press releases might suggest. XML appeared with a huge amount of attitude - "let's reinvent linking and styling" - and very little clear value to Web developers. Even apart from browser implementation issues, most Web developers never really got past why, and I don't think the XML community ever made a good effort at answering why. (I have tried, but don't always find my own answers convincing.) Some answers have proven useful over time, and tools like Cocoon and AxKit make it easier to demonstrate how XML can actually be useful to Web developers, but I still get a sense that the XML world sees the HTML world as a problem, not as an opportunity. Lots of people would like more than HTML - I think that explains a lot of the interest in XForms and SVG - but don't see much reason to reinvent the whole thing in XML's image. It's not simply a matter of bad kudzu. ------------- Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA http://simonstl.com may be my URI http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
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