Namespaces Revisited...

[John Cowan]

Tyler Baker wrote:

> [D]espite
> everyone crying about standards bodies being too slow, perhaps in this
> case the WG is being too fast.

Indeed.
 
> All of this talk about extending DTD's and element type inheritance
> seems to totally ignore the question of possible implementation.  An
> idea is just an idea until you something concrete behind it.  XML has
> the years of success of SGML behind it, but this namespaces stuff has
> nothing behind it.

And what's worse, there's an alternative (architectures) that actually
has an implementation (David Megginson's XAF), plus years of SGML
experience.

> The secrecy process that
> the W3C goes through makes me wonder sometimes if the W3C is simply a
> corporation responsible to its shareholders (those who fork over the big
> bucks to become members) rather than a real standards body for the
> betterment of computing.

That's *exactly* what it is.  It's a *consortium*, which serves the
interests of its members and no others.

Unfortunately, we're stuck with it, until some ISO/IEC committee
can be persuaded to take up XML (there is already one trying
to create ISO HTML).  ISO/IEC WGs may be horribly slow and politics-ridden,
but they can't just *ignore* comments if they are properly submitted.
They *have* to process all of them.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan at ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

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