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<TITLE>RE: why distinctions within XHTML?</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">-----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">From: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">David Brownell [SMTP:david-b@pacbell.net]</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Sent: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Tuesday, August 31, 1999 1:08 AM</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">To: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Ann Navarro</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Cc: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">XML-Dev Mailing list</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Subject: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Arial">Re: why distinctions within XHTML?</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">Ann Navarro wrote:</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">> Part of the problem here is what is and what isn't confidential discussions</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">> in a WG. If this were a W3C-internal list, I could be more forthcoming ...</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">And of course, that's the cause of a lot of the problems.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">The more I watch things at W3C, the more I feel that the Web should be</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">driven instead by a standards organization with public accountability.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">Being accountable to vendors who have vested interests in bloatware (as</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">key parts of new barriers to entry) isn't the right model.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">Somebody did the basic math in a comment: three variants of XHTML will</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">very quickly add an order of magnitude to the complexity of the systems</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">built with it. That's a deterrent to the use of XHTML, and discards the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">simplification that's long been at the core of the XML movement.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Courier New">- Dave</FONT>
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<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I agree with Dave. The more I look, the more I am convinced that the W3C is not the right standards body to deal with XML, which is being employed in many arenas that have absolutely nothing to do with the web. In fact, if/when the true potential of XML is realized, the web will be a minor player in that. SGML is/was not the native language of the web. HTML was derived for that purpose. XML is/has the potential to be used for much more then internet publishing of information. The web has benefited from many technological contributions, many of which predate the web by a couple of decades, and most of the technology that goes into it is not at all web specific (connection oriented stream TCP communications, MIME, request/response, etc.). To think that XML is a web-only or even a web-mostly language is to miss the boat so far as to not even notice the ripples.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Frankly, one has to question the W3C's ability to deliver a good product (I mean, *3* version 4 HTML's?????) Let's get real here. This body has only one goal in mind, and that is to create *us* and *them*, and leave *us* on top no matter the cost.</FONT></P>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Tahoma">Blair L. Murri</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Tahoma">Sr. Programmer/etc.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Tahoma">WavePhore, Inc.</FONT>
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