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The Past and Future of XML

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There is a very interesting interview with Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification, in the February 2005 ACM Queue  (it's only in the print version, not online, as of this writing). 

Some of the more intriguing bits ...

  • [Responding to a "if you had to do it over again ..." question ] "There's a lot of cruft in [XML] that turns out to be a bad return on investment.  The whole notion of 'entities' in the technical XML sense ... turns out to cause all sorts of hairy implementation nightmares that are just not worth it... If you were doing XML now, yes, you would clearly leave DTDs out."
  •   "[toward the end of the XML 1.0 deliberations] we were besieged by requests for extra features of one kind or another.  We basically lied and told the world, we would do all that stuff in version 2. You have to shoot the engineers and ship at some point, right?  I think there will never be an XML version 2.  There is an XML version 1.1, but it's controversial and not widely supported. "
  • "I remain fairly unconvinced of the core Semantic Web proposition...   My original vision of RDF was as a general-purpose meta-data interchange facility.  I hadn't seen that it was going to be the basis for a general-purpose KR vision of the world."
  • [Responding to a question about why ASN.1 'failed'] "If you have a stream of ASN.1, it says 'Here's a 35-character string, and here's a 64-bit IEEE double-precision number and floating point data.'  XML says 'Here's some text called label, here's some text called price.'  Historically it would appear that it's more valuable to know what something is called than what data type it is.  That's an interesting lesson."

On that point about XML 1.0 being both the past and future of XML, the W3C is holding a Technical Plenary Meeting soon.  One of the topics for general discussion is "Where XML is Going, and Where it Should (or Shouldn't) Go."  What do you folks think about this?  What do you like/loathe most about XML, and want to see preserved/excised? Do you want to see it stay the same, evolve, or be replaced?  If there was an XML 2.0 that removed the cruft that Tim Bray mentioned (and presumably cleans up a lot of loose ends and inconsistencies), would it make your lives easier or more difficult?   I'll be in the audience, and will be glad to pass on any opinions  from our customers/partners who want to be heard on these issues.

Mike Champion

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