More on Namespaces (also long, but also optimistic)

[Simon St.Laurent]

>On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, John Cowan wrote:

> > www.w3c.org is starting to look like Schema-of-the-Month Club.
> 
> The stuff they're publishing is Notes, which means "neat ideas by
> members; W3C doesn't endorse them in any way."

And Dan Brickley wrote:
>It's not all member submission Notes...
>
>eg. http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-schema/ (new version as of last week)
>
>...is the result of a W3C working group for RDF Schemas. 
>It addresses some but not yet all of the issues in the TimBL/DanC paper
>and looks, from where I'm standing, to be pretty complimentary to the
>ideas behind the DCD submission.

I hate to say it, but it's looking like the W3C is heading into the "let's get 
complicated as quickly as possible" thicket after a fairly refreshing period 
that produced XML 1.0.  Between RDF and DCD, not to mention namespaces, is a 
swirling vortex of bizarrely complicated stuff that describes pretty simple 
stuff.  XSchema (which will finish this week before a two-week review period) 
contributes yet another schema to the soup, so I can't claim I'm innocent, 
though simplification was one of my goals.

Still, could somebody slow this stuff down so that XML can have a tiny chance 
to grow?  We're not even at the first round of browser implementations and 
already it looks like XML is attempting self-immolation at the shrine of 
complexity.  The specs are doing too many things in too many places.

Simon St.Laurent
Dynamic HTML: A Primer / XML: A Primer / Cookies


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