[XML-SIG] Developer's Day

Sean Mc Grath sean@digitome.com
Sun, 19 Dec 1999 11:57:40 +0000


At 12:21 PM 12/18/99 -0600, Paul Prescod wrote:
>What's the point of standards if implementors violate them willy nilly?
>
>It is totally wrong to only support the parts of standards that you feel
>like and it is the sort of thing that makes me want to go and rip Bill
>Gates' head off (when, as is often the case) Microsoft is the
>perpetrator. I would be a total hypocrite if I held my friends and
>favorite languages to a lower standard.
>
Pauls position is completely legitimate but so to
is Fredriks.

The problem, as I have said many times on xml-dev, is that
XML on the face of it, is darned simple. You have start-tags,
attributes, end-tags and character data. We have all
seen "XML applications" and "XML parsers" which handle
this gang-of-four concepts. There is a large audience
out there who thinks that this is what XML *is*.

Now we can peer over the parapet and shout
"your parser smells of elderberries" or
"I wave my mixed content at your ankles",
as long as we like but the simple
gang-of-four base apps will not go way.

This dichotomy plays into the hands of
those who would embrace and extend XML.
XML is at risk of becoming not so much a "standard"
but a state of mind. Interoperbility between
XML documents and XML applications will be
the casualty.

I believe we should acknowledge that
variations on XML exist in the real world
and step in to avoid chaos developing.
On xml-dev before XML'99 I suggested the
idea of an XML "features manifest". A
structured document that declares what
features of XML 1.0 parser X or app. Y
supports/uses.

I received about 6 e-mails saying it was
a good idea. Hardly an avalanche!

I would like to propose that the XML-SIG
takes on board the task of producing an
"XML features manifest (XFM)" and then
producing XFM declarations for all the
applications that make up the XML-SIG
distribution.

We can then make this part of the distribution
so that all the bits are candidly descibing
what they can and cannot do. Once it
is in shape, I suggest we give this
to the XML world at large - especially
the NIST folks who are grappling with
the XML comformance issues.

Thoughts?

Sean,