[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: Improving XML desing?

• To: "Elliotte Harold" <elharo@m...>
• Subject: RE: Improving XML desing?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:13:14 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcZ0SZ9o7KIz/wRzQXyW320mjVsoPgAAMd3A
• Thread-topic: Improving XML desing?

We get some mileage out of those although it varies by application.
XML and markup in general are the admission that if semantics can't be shared, the parse space can be and that any inefficiencies in that space are overcome by the scale of applying it to other spaces.  It is the minimal contract.  Improvements in it accrue to many spaces so while we may chew on Juan's proposals in our typical junkyard dog way, we should always bite.

That said, again I agree with Pete.  I don't see a justification for a separate metadata parse space and I am eager to hear that particularly arguments that scale out the improvement to the other spaces.  We share a network infrastructure, an address syntax and a data syntax and not much else.  So we are quite sensitive to changes in any of those three.

<tangent>
No one can get it all right up front and still live under the many mythologies of Internet Time and Evolution.   It is possible to predict and it is possible to direct but there are limits on certainty and limits on power.  Moreover, there are values, norms and affordances that vary by locale.  Someone who says the future of the web is unpredictable is being superstitious; it is the cost of precision that varies.

To think about the web smartly, I think of it not as intelligent resources or objects but motion in ambient space of event types.  Not grokking VRML was one of the bigger mistakes the current top of the web pundit long tail made.  They don't get the concept of proximity as a sensor type, so they still think in terms of data and objects not ambient space.  When the object is smart, it can't share those smarts easily.  When the space is smart, it can.  Proximity is the emergent engine of fast local development.  In that model, everything is locale and event types in motion.
</tangent>

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Elliotte Harold [mailto:elharo@m...] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 10:49 AM
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re:  Improving XML desing?

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> I agree with Pete.  As soon as you introduce a new syntax, most of the
> reasons for ubiquitous XML adoption evaporate.   I assume you want to
> 'improve XML' and not nest another product inside it.  Attempts to do
> the latter have failed spectacularly.
> 

So have attempts to do the former. (Namespaces, XML 1.1, Schemas...) :-)

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@m...
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>

The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/

To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php>

• Prev by Date: Re: Improving XML desing?
• Next by Date: Major Historical SOA Milestone Today
• Previous by thread: Re: Improving XML desing?
• Next by thread: topic maps subset for writing by humans
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread