Re: X Marks the Spot.

Ernest Prabhakar (ernest@apple.com)
Thu, 31 Jul 97 13:12:01 -0700


>>(for their July/August 1997 issue, which just went to press).
Huh? Does that mean you missed the deadline, or that you just made it?

I'll assume you've submitted the official version, but you're willing to
introduce gratuitous inconsistencies in the Web version. ;-)

Under "XML: Marking up Everything...", the first sentence is garbled - your
cut and paste get stuck? Did their editors catch it?

A couple of things I was left wondering about. Not necessarily something
your paper should address, but interesting questions raised.

- Who is your target audience, HTML weenies with only passing familiarity
with SGML?

- What is the future of SGML? Does anybody -really- need it anymore?

- Is "mission-specific markup" a readily understood term? Do you need a
glossary of words like 'ontology'? Does everyone in your audience know these
things, or are you just showing off your education?

- I'd like to see the bCard DTD as an Appendix - is it really at that URL?

- Would it make sense to do a "PowerPoint" DTD which could represent
paginated and outline data? Is it in general possible, or ever desirable,
to use XML as your application's primary data storage format?

- Can any relational database (assuming only alphanumeric data) be fully
described via XML with an appropriate DTD

- Will people write XML-parsing browsers as a matter of course?

- Will HTML be viewed as a special case of XML, or will "normal" people use
HTML, application developers write DTDs for XML, and people in specific
domains use specific variants (dialects? what's the term?)

- I also notice you seem to mention but understate the use of XML as an IDL
replacement - is that deliberate?

Anyway, overall a fascinating read, and an interesting tone. I may even
read some of the references. I hope it is well received.

-- Ernie P.

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 06:12:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: I Find Karma <adam@milliways.cs.caltech.edu>
To: fork@pest.w3.org
Subject: X Marks the Spot.

I've finally incorporated all of Rohit's suggestions for our
paper introducing XML to the IEEE Internet Computing audience
(for their July/August 1997 issue, which just went to press).

So, our article "X Marks the Spot" is now ready for prime-time:

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/xml/

Comments are welcome, to improve the web version of this document.
-- Adam

----
adam@cs.caltech.edu

In a moment of reverse ego surfing Khare put up a link back to Cooper's
page to facilitate the further researches of self-referential Net
omphaloskeptics.
-- Keith Dawson