Re: Superb Feed piece on the Balkanization of XML

David Long (dxlong@aol.net)
Thu, 19 Mar 1998 14:55:33 -0500


It's certainly an entertaining story, and I don't believe that XML
is necessarily the most wonderful thing since sliced mayonaise, but
here are some rebuttals from the Feed Loop. I find Rob Glidden's
response most damning; is it really too much to expect at least
minimal journalistic integrity from a site which has a "MastHead"?
<http://www.feedmag.com/html/masthead_master.html>

-Dave

(where are transclusions when you want them?)

Rob Glidden:
<http://www.feedmag.com/cgi-bin/FeedlineLoop/underview.cgi?areanum=13&stringhead=13.5>

> This is a fanciful whistleblowing story that depicts a Rob Glidden
>that is not me, describes events that did not happen, and implies views
>that I do not hold.

Tim Bray:
<http://www.feedmag.com/cgi-bin/FeedlineLoop/underview.cgi?areanum=13&stringhead=13.3.6>

>That means if I at Universal Humungous Bank create a set of
>mortgage-calc tags, I'd better also provide (a) a stylesheet so that
>you can display them in whatever browser and (b) some Java classes so
>that they *do* something. So on that basis, the balkanization is
>perhaps less of a risk than suggested.

Simon St. Laurent:
<http://www.feedmag.com/cgi-bin/FeedlineLoop/underview.cgi?areanum=13&stringhead=13.6>

>But this is hardly the end of the world, and it's hardly because of
>XML. I'm sure they're glad that they don't need to strain anymore to
>cram their strange browser dreams into OBJECT tags, but it's still not
>going to be hard to parse their tags and yank out relevant content. It
>may make designers crazy to know that the work they did so
>painstakingly in IE 5 is getting read differently elsewhere, but that's
>really what XML is about.