[yadda yadda... now you're going somewhere... let's continue...]
The reason it is bad hinges on the horrible truth that XML is a
very nice syntax for marking up a document (file) according to its
semantic content, but does not provide a way to convey the
semantics of the document in a standard way.
Please define what you mean by "standard way"...
While this is obviously a hard problem...
...shared ontologies...
Are talking about the symbol grounding problem or are you talking
about the socio-political problem?
I subscribe to the Winograd/Flores(1) approach to systems. I don't
think you're going to solve the symbol grounding problem. So maybe XML
doesn't need anything more than for some disparate socio-political
factions to resolve their differences in any given domain.
Could you be more specific about that you think could be added to XML
given today's understanding(s) of systems and languages?
(1) _Understanding Computers and Cognition_, Winograd and Flores,
Addison-Wesley, 1986.
-- Patrick Logan mailto:patrickl@gemstone.com Voice 503-533-3365 Fax 503-629-8556 Gemstone Systems, Inc http://www.gemstone.com