http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-xml-961114.html
http://www.gca.org/conf/xml/xml_what.htm
http://www.textuality.com/xml
http://www.media.sbexpos.com/OldHotStories/961210.htm
The last article ("From the December 1996 issue of the Seybold Report on
Internet Publishing") includes this little note:
But what about Microsoft and Netscape? If Microsoft and
Netscape, the two leading suppliers of Web browsing tools, ignore XML,
it will have little impact. But there are very good indications that
Microsoft will support it. Jean Paoli of Microsoft is part of the
11-member editorial review board that makes final decisions on XML, and
so was intimately involved with the development of the specification.
The former head of development at Grif, an SGML vendor, Paoli is now
leading a development team working on Internet Explorer. He was
reluctant on the day of the announcement to commit his company's support
for XML, saying only that his group is actively pursuing client-side
computing. Microsoft has made no formal announcement about plans to
support XML in Internet Explorer, but Paoli said the company continues
to work on adding browser functionality based on open standards and
customer feedback. Paoli also said Microsoft does not have a competing
plan under development.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft is inviting customer feedback on whether
Internet Explorer should support XML in a future release. Send your
comments on this topic to Jean Paoli, jeanpa@microsoft.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The one vendor noticeably absent from the working group
was Netscape, even though it was invited to participate. "Their answer
was that they don't do SGML," Bosak told the audience. Later, Netscape
officials declined to comment.
We sincerely hope Netscape will realize the benefit XML
will be to the intranet market on which it is focusing its efforts. It
has been obvious for quite some time that HTML needs to evolve (that's
why there's a new revision every six months); XML gives everyone, both
vendors and users, a standard for marking up the elements and attributes
of their Web documents, in a way that is vendor neutral. Embracing XML
gives Netscape a chance to show that it really does know how to make a
competitive browser, and other competitive client applications.
Is this info regarding Netscape up-to-date? The "web is ruined" message
sort of implied that it is. And speaking of that message, can anyone
explain to me what the "smarmy <LAYER> tag" is, and what makes it
smarmy, and what (if anything) it has to do with XML?
Remember, be kind, I'm just an old OS hack trying to keep up in today's
world of objects and markup languages... I can answer any questions you
might have about virtual memory or processor scheduling or yes, even how
VxDs work...
- Joe
Joseph S. Barrera III (joebar@microsoft.com)
http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar
Phone, Redmond: (206) 936-3837; San Francisco: (415) 778-8227
Pager (100 char max): 1338993@roam.pagemart.net or (800) 864-8444