Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?

From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>
To: stephengreenubl@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 21:44:27 +1100

Play the video

I think the lesson is that a standard technology will ultimately die when its community fractures into groups who take a win/lose approach of cavilier veto-ing whatever they don't need: there is a Mexican standoff and stagnation. (Look at SGML in 1994, for example.)

This disinterest in the needs of others can take the forms of both minimalism ("I don't use feature X" as a justification for completely getting rid of it) and giantism ("I might need feature Z" as a justification for adding it as a required feature in the bundle some faction rams through: despite those who don't need it: XSD?)

This fracturing is almost assured as soon where the community is dominated by U.S. corporations, due to their sociopathic hyper-competitiveness: whatever advances my enemy is my enemy too.

Contrast with the win-win attitude, which allows modest evolution: it does not remove a feature without providing workable alternatives. And it does not add features which shift the complexity goalposts of the standard much (in the wrong direction.)

What happens when modest win-win change is not accomodated is that the Open Standard becomes a Closed Standard, and has the lifecycle that can entail.

By the way, my RAN language balloon (RAN now short for Rapid Access Notation) has had numerous impovements. For example, instead of needing some DTD or Schema to define that an attribute is an ID or IDREF, the attribute can be simply specified in the markup using == rather than = (to specify it is an anchor) and =# to specifiy it is an (outgoing) in-document link. (This is an example of not removing a feature (DTDs) without providing a workable alternative, b.t.w.)

See https://schematron.com/document/2957.html

Happy New Year

Rick Jelliffe

On Wed, 29 Dec. 2021, 05:02 Stephen D Green, <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> wrote:

Like politicians, you don’t find their problems till they get to power and by then it’s too late. If we cannot solve it with politicians, how can we hope to solve it with standard technologies?

On Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 17:44, Roger L Costello <costello@m...> wrote:
Michael Kay wrote:

> we've learnt as a community that trying to improve XML
> doesn't work: the standard is too deeply embedded.

Yes, I can see that. On this very list there have been several attempts to improve XML and none of the attempts gained much traction.

So what is the lesson to be learned from this? How about this:

When creating a new standard, get it right in its
first version because if the standard is a success
you likely won't get a chance to improve it later on.

Is that the lesson to be learned? If so, how to ensure that you "get it right"? For instance, what could the XML Working Group have done differently to get it right? Should the XML Working Group have delayed the release of the XML standard for a year or two until a sizeable group of people had had the opportunity to work with XML and report on its warts?

/Roger

_______________________________________________________________________

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

--
----
Stephen D Green

Follow-Ups:
- Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?
  - From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>

References:
- It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?
  - From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
- Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?
  - From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.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 >