Article on XML (and CML)
Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 28 May 1998 12:10:09
I have just posted the following message [to chemweb@ic.ac.uk]:
>
>Glyn Moody has written an interesting and informative article about XML for
>the New Scientist:
>http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980530/xml.html
>
>which spotlights CML among other markup languages. It is factually correct
>(not always the case with XML articles :-( )and highlights the challenge of
>providing universal semantics and metadata. One of the concerns (Mark
>Pesce, VRML) is that XML could lead to 'Balkanisation' of the Web, through
>designers sticking to their own tags. I take the opposite view - there
>could hardly be anything much worse than the current syntactic and semantic
>chaos in chemical informatics.
>
>One area of particular interest is schemata for metadata. Ora Lassila
>(Nokia) notes that "it takes a long time to get enough representatives from
>any community to agree on anything" and "expects that rough and ready
>schemata will become standards by default simply because people will start
>using them".
>
>There are many quotes from supporters, ending with P.G.Bartlett (ArborText):
>"XML will provde to be one of the top ten technological innovations of the
>first century of computing". I'll buy that.
>
It covers a wide range of subjects - has quotes from several members of
this list - and highlights the semantic/namespace challenge (not with those
terms). It is also one of the first to appear in a scientific/technical
journal and hopefully should promote responses from that community.
P.
Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg