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RE: Microsoft Hypes Up XUL As The Greatest Expiriment S ince A

• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Microsoft Hypes Up XUL As The Greatest Expiriment S ince Adam And Eve
• From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@n...>
• Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:53:55 -0500
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <r02000200-1028-B568740A0A1C11D8A92B0003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]>

Hi Len,

Len said:
why do this in XML at all.

Didier replies:
Excellent question! And this is a question we should ask for any language
using XML as its syntax coming from W3C or from anybody else.

Practitioner point of view:
---------------------------

Encoding a domain language into XML is useful if it is designed so that
other XML processing tools such as Xquery, XSLT, Xpath, etc... could easily
be applied on it. Period.

If we where to conduct usability test to an XML based language, we would
test how easy it is to use the other XML based processing language to
perform some operation on it.

Another potential advantage of XML based languages is that they could be
processed as document models in addition to domain specific models. The main
drawback of the camel (even if their intent is to create a horse - Note that
I have nothing against camel, they are nice animals :-) ) W3C comities are
creating is that the document model is not consistent from an XML based
processing or query language to another. Consistency is the main criteria
for any usable system.

I still remember a demo we gave a long time ago in a previous life when
people asked what is the difference between what they where seeing on a
Xerox Star machine and a mainframe terminal. Both could do the same job.
True, the main difference is that one system, even not perfect, is more
usable than the other.

Didier PH Martin
http://didier-martin.com

• References:
  • RE: Microsoft Hypes Up XUL As The Greatest Expiriment S ince Adam And Eve
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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