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Re: Ten new XQuery, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Working


criticism xquery
On Wed, 7 May 2003 22:17:28 +0100, Michael Kay <michael.h.kay@n...> 
wrote:


>
> There are plenty of areas in these specs that would really benefit from
> detailed review and feedback, but saying "I think I could design a
> better language" is not helpful at this stage.

Right.  But how about "I don't want to have to deal with all 40-odd XSDL 
types in my implementation, please change the Basic conformance level"?  
That seems to this outsider like a constructive suggestion, especially 
given the widespread, uhh, shall we say "lack of enthusiasm" for the XSDL 
type system (that Amy so brilliantly expounds upon).

Also, [definitely not wearing my Day Job hat, Dr. Kay gets paid to think 
about XPath/Xquery for our employer!] "alternative futures that we would 
prefer" is EXACTLY the question that the W3C Powers that Be are supposed to 
wrestle with before issuing a Recommendation, and they need input from the 
community as to whether a draft spec fits their needs or not. The Powers 
that Be don't pay attention to comments that a WG didn't have a chance to 
consider.  So, bottom line, for better or worse, if one wants TimBL and the 
TAG to listen to a fundamental criticism about a spec, "unconstructive" 
though it may be, one must annoy the WG on their comments list and be 
prepared for a "we considered and rejected your suggestion" response, and 
then refuse to accept the "resolution" so that the issue must be tracked 
all the way to the Director so that he can review it before approving the 
Proposed Recommendation.  [Someone correct me if I'm wrong about the 
process here, and it may be only W3C members that get to "lie down in the 
road" like this.]

This little dance is no fun for the chairs, editors, etc. but actually 
quite enlightening in the long run. But [now I'm definitely not wearing my 
Web Services Architecture hat!] witness my correpondence on www-ws-arch 
over the last year with Mark Baker, who makes it very clear that his 
objective is to see that our WG never gets to Recommendation status with 
anything that blesses current industry practice; as much as that sometimes 
drives me crazy, it's also been extremely educational and has forced the WG 
to come to grips with what the critics are saying ).  


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