[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Improved writing -- who's going to pay for it?
Linda van den Brink wrote: > > Ronald Bourret wrote: > > My point is that comprehensibility is critical, and that the > > lack of it > > is affecting things that are critical to them, such as reader input, > > implementation experience, and rapid acceptance. > > What I'm interested in knowing, is how sure are we that the w3c (schema and > other?) specs are not comprehensible enough, and that implementation > experience and rapid acceptance are being affected. Is it just a hunch we > have? A general feeling among people on this list? What's the w3c's view on > this? I was disappointed that there was almost no comment on this in the Last Call comments. But please, in advance, can people be really careful not to attack either the W3C as some big evil giant forcing fat standards on you or the XML Schema WG (and editors) as people who don't care about careful and systematic exposition to the target readership, to the best of their abilities. > If the XML-DEV community is convinced that Ronald Bourret has a point, then > shouldn't we find out how right this conviction is and decide on possible > further action? Yes please. I'll tell you why I don't think it matters so much. Many stakeholders are very keen that there should be no subsets of XML Schemas: strict validity should not be a function of the processor but the document. Nevertheless, I suspect that people who just want a DTD or XDR replacement (e.g. the people who would find RELAX core attractive) may find XSLD overkill. So I expect that someone will create a version of XML schemas using a different namespace and the same names, but simplified down to an XDR/RELAX Core level: Key constraints removed, simple type derivation removed, facets removed, include/ignore/redefine removed, complex type derivation removed, xsi:null removed, form/block/final/abstract removed. A schema in this language could be converted into an XML Schema by changing the namespace. Documentation and specs for it could be pretty simple and easy to express, both informally and formally. Of course, we already have XDR, SOX, RELAX core etc, so perhaps we don't need another DTD-in-XML+simple-datatyping schema language...but it would certainly be possible and, I think, attractive. Such a language could even serve as a training wheels version for XML Schemas. I don't expect W3C to do this. But there is nothing stopping some firebrand on this list coming up with it (the XSLT transformation to XML Schema namespace would surely be trivial). Then you can just ignore all the bits of XML Schemas you don't like. (Indeed, it is possible that you could use redefine to even maintain the same namespace, but I don't think that is fair use, and would only muddy the waters.) Rick Jelliffe
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