[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Will XML change the character of W3C?

• From: Paul Tchistopolskii <paul@q...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 23:13:38 -0700

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Thomas B. Passin <tpassin@h...>

>  HTML succeeded, I'm sure, because of three
> things:
> 
> 1) Anyone can write HTML, basically without training, just
> by looking at a few samples and experimenting.  

> With xml, lots of people saw the same thing - they could
> write useful xml without much of a learning curve and it
> would be useful for their purposes.

Agree.
 
> 2) Free servers and browsers, and non-commercial people who
> ran servers so there would be some places to store and find
> pages.

Free 'general-purpose'  *software* capable of *processing*
HTML. ( aka 'browser' and 'server' ). 

Pardon me - where is *such*  a software for XML ???
 
> 3) Free or low-cost access - the internet, in other words.
 
> All three of these are in place for xml too (well, maybe not
> browsers but at least processors) 

No! Not all three!  'End-user'  can use HTML and 
Apache not writing a line of code in any 'programming language'.

XML is almost  *useless* to non-developer, because how can 
end-user use XML 'as-is' ? For writing config files of Apache ?
Not a big improvement for the end-user.

Writing Web-pages in XML instead of HTML ??? No way.
Much harder ( for many reasons ).

The only people who can /are benefiting from 
XML are developers.

It is better to compare XML not to HTML but to TCP. 
Or to SQL.

To make situation with XML 'the same' with HTML 
we should provide all the 3 things *exactly*. 

Your explanation of HTML success is very accurate and 
I think it is clear that the only thing missing is software, 
software, software. 

At least that trivial-but-magic 'server/browser' pair is 
simply missing for XML !

That pair have maid the revolution, not only the 
syntax of HTML ... which syntax I like better 
than '('. Don't know why ;-) 

Rgds.Paul.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Will XML change the character of W3C?
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@h...>

• References:
  • RE: Will XML change the character of W3C?
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: Will XML change the character of W3C?
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@h...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Is it just me...
• Next by Date: Re: XML Schemas: Best Practices
• Previous by thread: Re: Will XML change the character of W3C?
• Next by thread: Re: Will XML change the character of W3C?
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread