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Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?

• To: Jirka Kosek <jirka@k...>
• Subject: Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
• From: Michael Champion <mchampion@x...>
• Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:28:39 -0700
• Cc: Stan Kitsis <skits@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <44A37EC7.2050606@k...>
• References: <7C80003DF5F4D640840D0D37250C143E01A1035F@R...> <44A303FA.10409@k...> <44A34133.8040507@x...> <44A37EC7.2050606@k...>
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Jirka Kosek wrote:
>
> Everyone who works with RELAX NG (at least in my experience) will tell 
> you that he/she didn't have any problems with it. The only problem is 
> that big vendors for some reason doesn't want to add support for 
> another schema language into their toolkits. This means that RELAX NG 
> is now used mainly only by informed experts, but not by masses of 
> developers.
>
Well, as a person at a big vendor who has the job of tracking the status 
/ mindshare / demand for various XML specs, I can tell you the reason:  
Almost no demand by actual paying customers. This is not FUD;  Dare, and 
Derek IIRC, I, and others have thought "cool, all I have to do is make a 
business case and Microsoft will support RELAX NG and lead us out of the 
XSD dark ages"   Trouble is, we just have nothing to work with to make 
such a case.  It's not just us; I don't think XML Spy or Stylus Studio 
support RELAX NG either, AFAIK for the same reason. 

As far as I can tell, the masses of developers aren't clamoring for 
RELAX NG because they don't use any schema language except via some 
tool, and the tools don't support it.  Even if they did the schema files 
would just be some semi-opaque stuff in a project directory, not 
anything most developers would care much about the syntax of.  I also 
used to think that was cynical FUD from the tool vendors, but, ahem, 
nobody is making much money off tools these days but customer support 
costs bazillions. I guarantee you that upper management would insist 
that we support RELAX NG  if anyone could make the case that it really 
would reduce support costs but reduce XML tools revenue. That would be a 
very easy tradeoff to make.

Bottom line seems to be that XSD, like RSS, , OPML, etc., are specs that 
the experts mostly hate but the paying customers more or less happily 
consume.  Figure out how to get around that dilemma and you'll be a hero.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: sterling <sstouden@t...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Jirka Kosek <jirka@k...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: David Lyon <david.lyon@p...>

• References:
  • RE: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: "Stan Kitsis" <skits@m...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Jirka Kosek <jirka@k...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Michael Champion <mchampion@x...>
  • Re: Restrictions on existence of attributes?
    • From: Jirka Kosek <jirka@k...>

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