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In my mind it wasn't clear where validation belonged and secondly who should be responsible for it being done. To clarify, SGML made it reasonably simple for a technical writer to express document definition, not validation per se, but an as-simple-as=possible 'these are the contents in the order needed for this specific task or communication'. Most of the fancy math computer sciency database stuff got ladled on to that basic need because we in the business of writing documents were increasingly writing for computer science applications instead of law, regulations, etc. We tended to bow down to the programmers. Dropping validation was on some minds most particularly the computer scientists who wanted markup to serve their needs. They have a lot of experience string schlepping and the idea that validation was necessary to define outside of their own code seemed wasteful and that at a time when every CPU cycle was sacred because scarce. To the writers having the toolkit to define the document made sense because frankly the computer scientists were even lousier at that then the lawyers had been. So markup became the possession of the computer scientists instead of the writers. It is bit like the scene in Star Wars where the Senate cheers mightily for the new Emperor. They think it a pretty good idea at the time. DTDs were and in many ways still a pretty good compromise for giving power tools to people who don't write a lot of code. XSD might have been a better compromise but once again the theoreticians, the math wonks and the compiler wonks took the field. Like a very heavy sword, it became something very powerful in the right hands and too hard to wield in others. Sad but so: Microsoft had it right in the beginning. Politics and market ideology were the avatars of local ambition. It's hard to fight a truckload of speeding money driven by ideologues at the behest of bankers. len -----Original Message----- From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] Sent: Saturday, November 07, 2009 8:08 AM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: XML spec and XSD Mukul Gandhi wrote: > But I feel, that mentioning XSD as a validation technology for XML > documents, in the XML spec is perhaps a good idea since DTD is also > mentioned in the XML spec (which is also a XML validation technology). > I feel, doing so doesn't promote any pedagogic or marketing attitudes > towards XSD. It's history. Leaving aside the question of how damaging W3C XML Schema has been, it simply wasn't part of the original XML vision. The three parts were supposed to be markup, style, and linking, learning from SGML, DSSSL, and HyTime respectively. Markup, inheriting from the SGML vision, included DTDs. I suspect that counting validation as a fourth component might have eased some problems all around, but that wasn't clear at the outset. That kind of change seems like a project for XML 2.0, not for an edition change. (And, of course, I'd argue hard against any effort to incorporate W3C XML Schema explicitly into XML 2.0....) -- Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com/ _______________________________________________________________________ XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS to support XML implementation and development. To minimize spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@l... subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@l... List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
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