XML complexity, namespaces (was WG)

[Len Bullard]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> As for standards bodies, I don't know.  Perhaps XML will eventually
> migrate to an Internation Standards body of some sort -- who knows if
> the W3C will even exist in five years? -- or (and this might be
> preferable) the torch will pass to a new, better-constituted body that
> takes over both the W3C and IETF standards.

I think also that trend is already in motion as evidenced by the 
formal working agreements between ISO and various consortia including 
the W3C and Web3D.  The ISO VRML97 standard started as a consortium 
standard which when mature enough and for which working implementations 
could be demonstrated reliably, was forwarded to ISO for international 
standardization.  That is a very healthy way to do this business.  
The W3C can stick closer to its charter of promoting technologies 
and specifications and spend less time on *standardization*.  This is
not 
to say the W3C work is not worthy, but the focus of standardization
often 
has legal tangles.  When engineers practice law, you get poor law.  
When lawyers engineer, airplanes fall out of the sky.  Its a matter 
of practice and focus.

The working agreements are like a wheel inside a wheel.  The inner 
wheels (the consortia) can turn fast.  The outer wheel (ISO) turns 
slower.  In concert, events are notated smoothly.

XML won't supplant SGML.  It won't have to. The same people I met 
building SGML are building XML.  The community matters.  The specs 
and standards are what we implement and agree on.  Nothing more. 

I miss Yuri.  He understood that.

len

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