Re: xml-dev Digest 7 Nov 2013 14:35:15 -0000 Issue 2878

From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>
To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org OASIS" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 03:17:32 +1100

Play the video

On this forum, XML is always discussed as a pure technology, in terms of abstract requirements like "separation".

I don't think this was XML's cause, in retrospect. I think XML is better seen as a response to (and enabler of) globalization. Its was the economics not the software engineering.

SGML was all about reducing the number of keystrokes that would be required to mark a document up: missing tags, short tags, general entities, default attributes, short references, etc. Fingers were expensive.

With globalization, the tactic of management towards costly fingers stopped being minimizing keystrokes and shifted to cheaper fingers. The economic rationale for those features disappeared, and suddenly those SGML features started to be decried as bad design, unnecessary and unnecessarily complex: and lo XML was born. People involved at that time, finding themselves in the new world, might not have been aware that they were chanelling the spirit of the age, being children of their time.

If you have a techno-centric view of XML's history, that it was caused (rather than formed) fundamentally by a desire for simplicity and purity, then the lack of a continued evolution in XML in the direction of satisfying ever more abstract loveliness must be puzzling. But if you take the economic view, however, then what is needed for a big new advance is some new international economic requirements. For example if, in the age of Snowden, business and government decided they wanted field-level encryption and security in documents, rather than just file level, that could provide the economic impetus for a new mix.

Cheers
Rick

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 2:16 AM, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:

>
> Some time later on, my brain fully exploded when I realised that there is no clean layered separation possible (at least that I could envisage) that would still give you all the features of full-on SGML.
>
> Some time later on, I concluded that this is inevitably true in any powerful text processing system because semantics - real semantics - is on great big hermeneutic circle.
>

XML could have achieved far better separation if it had chosen. The intertwingling of the physical and logical layers caused by the rule that elements must be well-balanced within entities is a quite unnecessary constraint on implementation modularity; the interactions between entity expansion and syntactic parsing within DTDs are even worse. I don't think it's at all true that these complications are inevitable.

Michael Kay
Saxonica

_______________________________________________________________________

XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS
to support XML implementation and development. To minimize
spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting.

[Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/
Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org
subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org
List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php

References:
- Re: xml-dev Digest 7 Nov 2013 14:35:15 -0000 Issue 2878
  - From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com>
- Re: xml-dev Digest 7 Nov 2013 14:35:15 -0000 Issue 2878
  - From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index]

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Subscribe in XML format

RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3

Stylus Studio has published XML-DEV in RSS and ATOM formats, enabling users to easily subcribe to the list from their preferred news reader application.

Stylus Studio Sponsored Links are added links designed to provide related and additional information to the visitors of this website. they were not included by the author in the initial post. To view the content without the Sponsor Links please click here.

XML Editor - Download a 15 Day Free Trial Now >

See What's New in Stylus Studio >

Buy Stylus Studio - XML Editor - Now >