Re: XML

[Ben Hochstedler <nospam@thanx>]

> Hmmmm.. I've followed the XML-stuff of the W3C only sparingly.  Ok, XML now is
> standardized, but as I know, there are no real applications available (like
> HTML for SGML). Only a few Java-based parsers and other experimental stuff is
> available. Only Mozilla 5 should contain some XML-parsing stuff. But because

Microsoft's Internet Explorer as well as its office applications will
support XML in their next major releases.

> the complete XML-topic is still in experimental stage, I've never though in
> the past that it is already interesting for WML. But perhaps time has changed
> now.  So, what concrete support for XML do think WML should have in the
> future?

One way of describing WML is that it "helps automate the production and 
simplify the maintanence of hyperlinked, stylistic documents."  You can 
say the exact same thing about why XML is being created.  Maintaining
large websites can be a pain without some tool.  Right now a lot of
effort is focussed on scripting and using databases.  I think XML will
reduce the amount of scripting and database necessary in helping
to maintain websites.  Another way of seeing it is that it's going to
do what SGML could have done, but because SGML was so complex and
not easily learned, a more simplified version (XML) will provide some
of the exciting and powerful features HTML didn't include from SGML.

> OTOH my plans for WML are the following: WML 1.x will be maintained by me at
> least for the next year but only enhanced slightly (because the implementation
> cannot be made a lot better this way and plans for WML 2.x are already in
> progress). Until then I hope that WML 2.x is available which is based on the
> tool I currently create as a prototype in my diploma thesis. And for this tool
> maximum speed and generality in usage is my primary goal (because what WML 1.x
> really lacks is performance). In other words: XML is one goal for WML 2.x,
> too. Yes. But perhaps it is easy to add XML support to WML 1.x and we can do
> it easily.  As long as it is possible for me to add it with my available time,
> I'll do it. And when someone contributes a patch we can have it in 1.x, of
> course.

Your plans for WML sound good.

> But first we have to know what exact support for generating XML-based markup
> is needed in WML (please help us here with examples and hints). Then we can
> decide how much work it is.

I should have been more clear in my first message.  What I meant was
for WML to take XML as input and produce HTML, not for it to automate
the construction of XML.

Something that is going to be hard to develop are good tools for
managing XML documents, and I can't see very easily how WML could be
enhanced to do that.  What I see is that WML has scripting features
to produce HTML that XML with CSS & extended CSS can do if there were
XML rendering applications that supported it.


Am I way off base here?

-Ben

Ben Hochstedler         www.mei.com        Marquette Medical Systems
ben.hochstedler@mail.mei.com  Phone: 414-362-3317  Fax: 414-362-3389

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