Handheld computers

[Rick Jelliffe]

 From: Matthew Gertner <matthew at praxis.cz>

>My very personal opinion is that the argument for SML based on
>targetting devices with limited memory and computational power is
bogus.

My first 2.5 years programming was on assembler for real-time
controllers,
it could take 3 months to write a program and then 3 months to figure
out
how to make it fit into the PROM.  So I certainly have sympathy for the
view
that small is beautiful: but how does a device that has such small
memory
requirements fit in networking capability anyway?  And if it is not a
Web
device, why is the topic raised on XML-DEV and not comp.text?

>However, XLink, XPath, XML Schema, namespaces and all the rest are
>expanding the scope, and thus the complexity, of XML everyday. If there
>isn't some corresponding impetus for simplication in other areas then
we
>will indeed run up against a wall eventually. This may be inevitable,
>but by taking the issue seriously now we can at least hope that it will
>be later rather than sooner.

I expect there will be a successor to XML one day. And ISO 8879 will
undoubtedly have a maintainence fix so that it too is SGML.

But if you want simplification, the worst thing you could do at the
moment
is push either an XML++ or an XML--

That would not result in any simplification of our lives at all: it
would
just provide a mechanism for the company men to adopt whichever
markup language will cause their competitors most harm. This is
rational behaviour, and we should expect it.

TCP/IP is incredibly complicated, and who cares?  The IP NG people have
rhetoric about it (they need to justify their research efforts) but it
is
working spectacularly well.  We only care about the layer we deal with,
after things are set up.

Rick Jelliffe


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