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My grandma used to say "a standard is, as a standard does". Participating in several list-servers for emerging standards as a potential user, I can add my observation that one reason for low success-rates from standards bodies is that they tend to be naïve about management of marketing requirements. Software companies work hard to support product marketing staff to force R&D to consider what's actually required by intended users. Many standards groups are like R&D departments enjoying a vacation from pesky market requirements (present company excepted!) To me, XML seems little more than a standard language for representing abstract syntax, handling pesky issues like namespaces and references (xpath). In the UNIX era (is it over?) Yacc and Lex provided a framework that allowed nifty little languages to be invented easily, for any purpose. Perhaps XML is more useful in that it eliminates the lexer/parser layer, and encourages us to exchange information at the parse-tree level, instead of bothering with lots of unique (though sometimes interesting) languages. -Allen -----Original Message----- From: Jim Ancona [mailto:jim@a...] Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 9:56 AM To: xml-dev@l... Cc: jim.waldo@e... Subject: Why Standards? Jim Waldo has a weblog post at http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4840 which, while not mentioning XML, seems to relate pretty well to some of our standards permathreads on xml-dev. He writes: "I can't think of a single standard that was invented by committee that has survived in the marketplace. The long-standing standards are those that were first de facto standards, and were described (no invented) by the standards bodies." Perhaps XML is a counter-example, although one could object that: - XML is a codification of SGML best practices for the web, and hence was described, not invented. To me, XML seems like a bit of a hybrid, neither invented from scratch, nor a straight documentation of existing practice. - It's too soon to tell. At five years old, XML seems to be doing pretty well, but it certainly isn't up there with IP or ANSI C as long-lasting standards go. Some of the follow-on XML standards like XML Schema and XQuery are clearly in the "invented" category. It will be interesting keep Jim's comments in mind as we watch their progress Jim ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
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