Eric van der Vlist
XML Prague 2012
Revisiting the question that was the tag line of XML Prague last year: "XML as new lingua franca for the Web. Why did it never happen?", Eric tries to answer to other questions such as: "where is XML going?" or "is XML declining, becoming an eX Markup Language?".
Eric van der Vlist
XML Prague 2012
Revisiting the question that was the tag line of XML Prague last year: "XML as new lingua franca for the Web. Why did it never happen?", Eric tries to answer to other questions such as: "where is XML going?" or "is XML declining, becoming an eX Markup Language?".
Welcome to the less technical and most controversial talk of the conference
There will be no time for questions (too many slides, too controversial)!
My talk would have been different if I had seen Jeni's one before
Next year, can you please leave a couple of days before Jeni's openening keynotes and the next talk so that we can adapt?
Tag line for XML Prague 2011
Still waiting for an answer...
The United States Senate passes Resolution 71, urging U.S. President Bill Clinton to "take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: a United States Military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying plane severs the cable of a cable-car.
February 4 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000 people.
February 7–February 22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
February 10– Advancing its mission to lead the Web to its full potential, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today announced the release of the XML 1.0 specification as a W3C Recommendation. XML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for the Extensible Markup Language, a system for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the Web
February 16 – China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, killing 202 people (all 196 on board and 6 on the ground).
February 20 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein negotiates a deal with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, allowing weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad, preventing military action by the United States and Britain.
Source: Wikipedia
XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
XML shall be compatible with SGML.
It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.
XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
The XML design should be prepared quickly.
The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
XML documents shall be easy to create.
Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.
XML arose from the recognition that key components of the original web infrastructure -- HTML tagging, simple hypertext linking, and hardcoded presentation -- would not scale up to meet the future needs of the web. This awareness started with people like me who were involved in industrial-strength electronic publishing before the web came into existence.
Source: Jon Bosak
The big-gun database vendors, IBM and Oracle, see XML as a pathway into and out of their data management tools. The big-gun browser vendors, Netscape and Microsoft, see XML as the e-commerce everywhere technology. The big-gun book and document publishers, for all media, are seeing a new influx of tools, integrators, and interest but the direction XML publishing will take is less well-defined and more contingent on linking and style specs still in the hands of the W3C.
Stop the XML hype, I want to get off
As editor of XML.com, I welcome the massive success XML has had. But things prized by the XML community — openness and interoperability — are getting swallowed up in a blaze of marketing hype. Is this the price of success, or something we can avoid?
Source: Edd Dumbill (March 2001)
I've spent years learning XML / I like XML / This is why www.XmlSuck.com is here
Source: PaulT (January 2001)
Working Group size - so many people means it is difficult to gain consensus, or even know everyone's face. Conference calls are difficult.
This is a huge responsibility for the Schema Working Group since it means that the defects of W3C XML Schema will be perceived by most as defects of XML.
XML is now as important for the Web as HTML was to the foundation of the Web. XML is everywhere.
Source: connet.us (February 2001)
When the wind is strong enough, even flatirons can fly.
Source: Anonymous (February 2012)
XML, a subset of SGML
HTML, a SGML application that did not match the XML subset
Refactor HTML to meet the XML requirements
XML was (supposedly) so successful that everyone will follow
the problem with XHTML is :
a) it's different enough from HTML to create new compatibility problems.
b) it's not different enough from HTML to bring significant advantages.
XML, XML, Everywhere
There's no avoiding XML in the .NET world. XML isn't just used in Web applications, it's at the heart of the way data is stored, manipulated, and exchanged in .NET systems.
No support for application/xhtml+xml in IE
You can serve XHTML if you don't say so!
XML == dominant buzzword => false impression of wide adoption
Many developers deeply upset by the hype
Serving XHTML web pages as such is not an option
The XML hype was still high
Another hype was growing...
The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come.
Ironically, the defining trait of Web 2.0 will be that it won't have any visible characteristics at all. The Web will be identified only by its underlying DNA structure-- TCP/IP (the protocol that controls how files are transported across the Internet); HTTP (the protocol that rules the communication between computers on the Web), and URLs (a method for identifying files).
The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.
Source: Darcy DiNucci (1999)
Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:
standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
and JavaScript binding everything together.
Back in 2005, we could still think that XML would dominate the Web
Both for documents (XHTML) and data
This vision defended by the W3C, has been torpedoed by:
Founded in 1985
Browsers War I battle ground
Software developers are increasingly using the Internet as a software platform, with Web browsers serving as front ends for server-based services. Existing W3C technologies — including HTML, CSS and the DOM — are used, together with other technologies such as JavaScript, to build user interfaces for these Web-based applications.
However, the aforementioned technologies were not developed with Web Applications in mind, and these systems often have to rely on poorly documented behaviors. Furthermore, the next generation of Web Applications will add new requirements to the development environment — requirements these technologies are not prepared to fulfill alone. The new technologies being developed by the W3C and IETF can contribute to Web Applications, but these are often designed to address other needs and only consider Web Applications in a peripheral way.
The Web Hypertext Applications Technology working group therefore intends to address the need for one coherent development environment for Web Applications. To this end, the working group will create technical specifications that are intended for implementation in mass-market Web browsers, in particular Safari, Mozilla, and Opera.
Source: WHATWG (June 2004)
HTML work resumed within W3C in 2007
Unfortunately, XML is not well suited to data-interchange, much as a wrench is not well-suited to driving nails. It carries a lot of baggage, and it doesn't match the data model of most programming languages. When most programmers saw XML for the first time, they were shocked at how ugly and inefficient it was. It turns out that that first reaction was the correct one. There is another text notation that has all of the advantages of XML, but is much better suited to data-interchange. That notation is JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
Source: Douglas Crockford (JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML)
Bad timing between the XML and HTML specifications (see Adam Retter's presentation at XML Amsterdam 2011).
Lack of quality of some XML recommendations (XML Namespaces, XML Schema, ...).
Lack of pedagogy to explain why XML is the nicer technology on the earth.
Dumbness of Web developers who do not use XML.
...
XML is about extensibility
When extensibility is not required, XML will always loose against DSLs:
Yes, HTML should have been created as an XML application,
But that was not the case!
XML arose from the recognition that key components of the original web infrastructure -- HTML tagging, simple hypertext linking, and hardcoded presentation -- would not scale up to meet the future needs of the web. This awareness started with people like me who were involved in industrial-strength electronic publishing before the web came into existence.
Source: Jon Bosak
HTML did scale!
The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages
The XML design meant:
Existing (valid) HTML documents must be considered well formed XML.
This should have been the first design goal
XML has a unique toolbox
A new buzzword?
Java, JavaScript, Ruby are becoming ecosystems
We have created a strong ecosystem that goes beyond the XML syntax
A generic data model
Forget batles that have been lost
Focus on the data model and tools
Our data model must support:
Other possible candidates:
Past initiatives have failed so far (Simple XML, SML, XML 2.0, Micro XML, ... and even XML 1.1)
What benefit can compensate a lack of compatibility?
What benefit if it stays compatible?
More during Anne van Kesteren's presentation!
Angle Brackets Are a Way of Life
Source: Planet XMLHack
