Feeler for SML (Simple Markup Language)

[Michael Champion]

----- Original Message -----
From: Matthew Gertner <matthew at praxis.cz>
To: <xml-dev at ic.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 1999 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: Feeler for SML (Simple Markup Language)


> In terms of necessity, it seems more than
> likely that embedded and handheld devices are going to work with a
> specific XML application (e.g. WML) rather than providing generic
> XML processing services.

The problem I see is that handhelds may use WML *today* as a simple display
format, but historically simple display devices have tended to acquire
intelligence.  I fear that full-blown XML will be too heavy for such
devices, so the vendors will invent their own subsets.  So we may end up
with the worst of both worlds .. rather than bifurcation of the standard,
we'll have multiplication of all sorts of non-standard variants.

Remember 1995-1997 in the HTML Web ... It saw HTML become its own "world"
totally distinct from its SGML roots, and it saw numerous incompatible
variants of HTML proliferate. This could happen again, this time with XML as
the creaky old "bloated" standard that doesn't fit the needs of the
fast-moving innovators.  I'm not at all sure that "SML" could prevent that,
but I see the same complaints about XML and the DOM API (pretty much the
points that Don made in the original post) again and again among people
trying to use it in light client or high performance applications.

Bifurcation is not as desireable as unification, but it beats chaos!





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