What's this XML stuff anyway? (was Re: Alternatives to the W3C)

[David Brownell]

Tim Bray wrote:
> 
> At 09:40 PM 1/23/00 -0600, Len Bullard wrote:
> >So is DOM really required for XML 1.0, or is that a political position
> >about implementations?

No and yes, respectively.  The XML spec defines XML.


> There is no *point* to supporting XML in the browser if you don't
> support the DOM.  If all you want is to display nice-looking stuff
> to humans, HTML does an excellent job of that. -Tim

So does XML with a stylesheet, such as CSS (pref. CSS1 + CSS2/tables),
or XSLT + XSL-FO.  (Or XSLT + XHTML/CSS.)  Seems to me that the clear
separation of content (XML) and presentation (stylesheet) is a great
example of a "point" ... with clear advantages over each of the broken
flavors of HTML one must otherwise choose from.

There are points to having DOM, but they're not just "browsing".  DOM
certainly implies some programming environment.  Many of us would like
it not to be JavaScript (with its designed-in security holes).

It's important to distinguish between browser-as-browser, where XML
plus a stylesheet-based rendering engine is fine, and a programming
environment.  The latter certainly benefits from something like DOM;
if the former used it, you couldn't tell.

- Dave

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