RE: ANN: REXML 2.3.5 && 2.2.3

[e-mail] wrote:

> Depends on what is meant by "standard"

In this case, I mean what is likely to be used.  The W3C does tend to act 
like a standards body, but you can't really blame them.  They try pretty 
hard to let people know that they aren't a standards body.

WARNING: The following is an internal debate, externalized.  I'm not 
knocking anything, I'm just trying to make a decision.  Well, that's not 
true.  I'll often knock Microsoft, but that's neither here nor there.

RelaxNG is going to be of limited use if software doesn't support it.  For 
example, I use four dominant pieces of software for my XML work; two of the 
four are incorporating XMLSchema support, and the remaining two have no 
clearly stated plans for any sort of validating support.  I haven't haven't 
seen any XML software claiming to support RelaxNG, except for 
RelaxNG-specific software.  This doesn't mean that it doesn't exist; it 
just means that I'm not peripherally aware of it.  I don't use validation 
much -- I do know it is important for a lot of applications and I value it, 
I just don't have much use for it myself and therefore don't follow it 
much.

My point being, that RelaxNG can be a wonderful, elegant, simple, and 
efficient spec -- and still be entirely useless.  I'm not terribly 
interested in bulking up REXML with features that very few people will use, 
at the expense of not providing them with features that many need.  If I 
were just writing REXML for myself, I wouldn't care; I'd use whatever were 
easiest, be it Tom's XMLProof, RelaxNG, or whatever took my fancy.  By this 
point, however, I feel a sort of obligation to the people who use REXML.

I think this is one of those cases where I'm just going to have to make a 
leap of faith.  After looking over RelaxNG -- superficially -- I prefer it 
to XMLSchema.  I certainly hope it is more successful than XMLSchema.  
XMLSchema looks to me like something Microsoft got their hands on -- 
bloated and overly complex.

My big question is: do I invest the time and effort in providing XML 
validation via RelaxNG, via XMLSchema, or do I wait and see which comes out 
"on top"?

-- 
 |..  "Where's the garlic?  It was just here.  It's like it disappeared in
<|>    a puff of smoke.  But not even that, because then at least I could
/|\    have said: 'Poof!  There goes the garlic.'"  -- Monika McDole
/|    
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