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What things have achieved universal acceptance across the entireXML comm

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:48:41 -0500

Hi Folks,

What things have humans universally agreed to?

I suspect that there is nothing that humans have universally agreed to. However, these math symbols:

   1, 2, 3, ..., 9, +, -, /, x

are pretty darn close to being universally accepted.


We are 10 years into the XML experiment. In that time span what has become universally accepted? 

Here are my thoughts on this:

(a) The XML Schema 1.0 datatypes--string, integer, date, time, boolean, etc--are used in many XML technologies. For example, they are used in XML Schema, XSLT, Schematron, and XQuery. I don't see any XML technologies abandoning those data types in favor of some other set of data types. 

I think that the XML Schema 1.0 data types are universally accepted by the XML community.


(b) The XML namespace is built into every XML application. The XML namespace has 4 attributes:

1. xml:lang
2. xml:space
3. xml:base
4. xml:id

The xml:lang and xml:space attributes are defined in the XML REC. They are supported by the XML parser and therefore are available for use
with any XML application. The other two are not.

I think that the XML namespace, xml:lang, and xml:space are universally accepted by the XML community.


That's it. I can't think of anything else that has achieved acceptance across all the XML technologies. 


QUESTION #1

Am I missed anything?


QUESTION #2

Why were we (the XML community) able to achieve universal acceptance of a set of data types? What is it about data types that make them easy to get universal agreement? Are data types inherently easy to standardize? What is it that makes them inherently easy to standardize? 

Consider a community with many diverse members. The community wants to create community-wide standards. Are data types a good target for standardizing? For example, the community may create a standard Family Name data type.


QUESTION #3

Why has there been such a dismal ability to create universally accepted markup items? In 10 years we (the XML community) have been able to only agree on two markup items: xml:id and xml:space. Why? For example, why haven't we achieved universal acceptance on a <location> element? What is it about markup items that make them so hard to get universal agreement? 

Again, consider a diverse community that is trying to create community-wide standards. Are markup items just so notoriously difficult to achieve universal acceptance that it is simply a waste of time and money to try?

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: What things have achieved universal acceptance acrossthe entire XML community? What are the characteristics of readily standardizablethings?
    • From: Mike Sokolov <sokolov@ifactory.com>
  • Re: What things have achieved universal acceptance acrossthe entire XML community? What are the characteristics of readily standardizablethings?
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
  • Re: What things have achieved universal acceptance acrossthe entire XML community? What are the characteristics of readily standardizablethings?
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>