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I'll bite on this ... Conceptually, what is the difference between this suggestion (better CSS) then supporting XSLT in the browser ? ---------------------------------------- David A. Lee dlee@c... http://www.xmlsh.org -----Original Message----- From: Ben Trafford [mailto:ben@p...] Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2010 11:49 PM To: Kurt Cagle Cc: liam@w...; Elliotte Rusty Harold; Amelia A Lewis; Michael Fuller; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: RE: James Clark: XML versus the Web I don't disagree with any Kurt has said, but would like to repeat a suggestion I've made elsewhere: One of the big topics people seem to be avoiding is "Why does HTML still promote native behaviors?" A lot of the issues with XML in the browser simply go away if we can move HTML native behaviors to CSS. For example: I can't declare a link in a browser in anything other than HTML. Let's say I have a document... <document> <link uri="http://www.prodigal.ca">This is Ben's webpage.</link> </document> Why could I not have a CSS stylesheet that looks like this? link { link-type: simple; link-href: attr('uri'); } This only addresses the question of links, but as we all know, there are a host of behaviors in HTML that have never been disambiguated from the markup. We can address all the issues that have cropped as a result of over-standardization, XML technologies that have matured at differing paces, etc. Believe me, I would have -loved- to have Relax-NG back twelve years ago when were thinking about XLink. I would've advocated for making everything about XLinks into a schema-based datatype spec that could be applied without any alteration of the pre-existing markup. However, something everybody seems to be forgetting is that XML modules are almost entirely optional. The XML spec requires very little compliance with anything beyond the basics. You don't -need- to use DOM. You don't -need- to use XSD. So, if what we're -really- talking about is "XML vs the Web", the first place we need to start is not in tearing down all the old cruft, but in figuring out what needs to be done to existing web technologies to make XML on the Web workable, with a mindset to compatibility. I'd never argue, for instance, that we rend all the native behaviors out of HTML -- it should still display those things natively. But if we modified CSS to allow it to do everything HTML does natively, -and- to override native behaviors, then we could have webpages made out of any markup language people like. Imagine being able to apply web technologies to all the XML that largely exists behind corporate walls -- ATA 2100 and the five billion documents that Lexis-Nexis has, etc. I think that if we actually go back to basics (separating content from behavior), we can come up with simple, elegant solutions that will make XML on the web a reality without breaking any of the old stuff...crufty or not. And for my money, actually being able to display any markup I like with all the power of HTML and its related technologies would be a grand start that requires very little work, comparative to some of the thornier issues I've seen bandied about the last week or two. --->Ben
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