[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Partyin' like it's 1999
We're coming up on the 5-year anniversary of the mother of all xml-dev permathreads, about whether XML and the related specs are too complex and in need of simplification. Like most conflicts, the flamewar had multiple roots that become apparent when scanning through the xml-dev archives for October-November 1999. There were threads about disillusionment with XML interoperability, the elements vs attributes debate, the creeping realization that the namespaces spec was going to create massive confusion, fear that the emerging schema spec would create even more confusion, and discussion of the numerous pitfalls of external parsed entities. This led to a tongue-in-cheek 'announcement' by Rick Jelliffe on November 11, 1999 of "XML 2.0 alpha" http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/199911/msg00289.html which removed all the controversial bits of XML 1.0, i.e. everything but data and optional comments. To Rick's horror (IIRC), this led to a serious proposal by Don Park for a "Simplified Markup Language" or SML http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/199911/msg00300.html Things got so roasty-toasty for awhile that on Nov 28 Don started an sml-dev mailing list to offload this discussion from xml-dev. I was reminded of this bit of history from reading various articles and weblog posts over the last week or so. For example, in XML Journal we have http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=46771&de=1 "Where Does XML 1.0 Go Astray?". This gets into sml-dev territory with complaints about namespaces as well as the character handling and whitespace confusion in XML 1.0. Likewise, writeups of the Sells' XML Developers Conference http://www.sellsbrothers.com/conference/ last week noted a certain amount of disillusionment with XML, driven especially by Chris Andersen's "Developers Hate XML" and by Sam Ruby's "XML is an Attractive Nuisance" presentations. This even made the mainstream trade press: "XML Developers Push for Simplicity" http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1681539,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594 It's also clear from these writeups that XSD has stopped being controversial -- EVERYBODY hates it :-) OK, that's an exaggeration, but the mainstream of XML developers, even the web services and relational database folks who allegedly steamrollered it through the W3C, are finding it inadequate ... and many are taking RELAX NG more seriously. As Kurt Cagle http://metaphoricalweb.blogspot.com/2004/10/conferences-and-google.html put it, "RNG was designed from the bottom up to be a compelling language for defining schemas, XSD was designed from the top down as being a wish-list for vendor support of certain features." So, 5 years later ... is it NOW time to think seriously about cleaning up the core XML specs to address the challenges that real-world non-XMLgeeks have with them (hopefully without throwing out the interoperability baby with the bathwater), is it time to redouble efforts to educate non-XMLgeeks on why they should eat their XML 1.0 veggies and stop whining, will better tools and best practice guidelines solve the problems, or what?
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