Re: RE: [xml-dev] Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (was Re: [xml-dev] TAG on HLink)

9/27/2002 1:51:54 PM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <> wrote:

>
>I am beginning to believe that attempting to work 
>with self-descriptive systems for any given problem 
>in every case is a non-starter.  Well-formedness 
>simply isn't enough for interoperability; portability, 
>yes, but not interoperability.

I'm not sure if I want to touch this mess, but RSS might
be considered a counter-example.  Sheesh, the weblog syndicators
don't even seem to care much about well-formedness, just enough
syntax constraint to point everyone in more or less the same
direction.  Still, NewsIsFree.com and a whole bunch of other
aggregators manage to do a decent job of extracting a reasonable
amount of meat from the tag soup.

This is, admittedly a REAL simple use case (they only look for
a small number of tags in a very flat XML hierarchy) but seems
to at least minimally prove the concept that well-formed XML
is more than a "non-starter."   Getting those folks to agree
on a common schema is EMPRICALLY a non-starter :-)
(Apologies to Eric and others who have labored in that vineyard!).