Who will take responsibility for guiding XML's evolution? was Re: [xml-dev] Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

11/1/2002 10:01:59 AM, John Cowan <> wrote:


>Not so.  Until a week ago, the burden of persuasion was on the Core WG
>to come up with a mechanism for character entities or show that none was
>needed.  We have done the latter.  The next move belongs to y'all.

Or on the legions of people we don't know who will simply vote with
their feet ....

I honestly think this is a bit of a cop-out.  Someone needs to be 
thinking of the end-users, and listening to the hard truths that
Ann Navarro in particular (or at least her posts stick in my mind)
have been making in this thread.  I detected a "not my problem" 
attitude ... or  a "we make the rules, it's not OUR fault if people
don't play by them and get themselves in a muddle" tone in some of the
other posts.  I don't think that's healthy.  Nor is the "there will
always be tools to handle the ugly details" answer very compelling,
IMHO. 

Somebody has to be thinking proactively about whether XML/XHTML is 
solving real problems and what has to be done to continuously improve
it.  Maybe that's not the Core WG ...but if not, who?