I am extremely pleased to see this announcement and hope that XML-DEV can
act supportively. I am 100% in favour of 'no semantics' in XML. The only
concern I have about that philosophy is that the community might have many
different unconnected approaches to developing semantics which would
significantly decrease interoperability.
Jon's announcement should help developers plan their timescales for
creating their own semantics. There is little to be gained by doing it too
early if the rest of the community is going to have a well-crafted,
publicly developed approach in a few months. Like many others, I need some
of the components of XML-data and so whatever I do at present I have
designed to be 'throw-away' when the W3C deliberations start coalescing.
It's worth remembering that this is probably the first global public
exercise in developing semantics other than in specialised domains. There
is a great deal to do - and the 'inheritance' discussion shows that it is
a level of complexity tougher than syntax. Our discussions (and success)
with SAX shows that it often takes repeated starts to get workable
approaches. I am confident that the public discussion over the last year
will prove very useful to those involved in coming up with formal suggestions.
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