XML Conference Report: Summary
There were some significant messages that were repeated throughout the two days:
- corporate publishers have lots of documents in SGML and they would rather be able to deliver those documents on the Web using SGML/XML rather than HTML
- creating XML documents may not be significantly cheaper or faster than SGML documents, but the ability to deliver
XML on the Web will be a significant contributor to the financial
and less tangible benefits of using XML (e.g., greater opportunity
for client-side processing and/or client-side added value; more
context and thus more reliable searching; ability to personalize
product)
- frustration with limits of HTML and speed of
Internet may be reaching critical mass and thus creating an opportunity
to present a new language (XML)
- XML is scalable - HTML is not
- to create XML (not convert from existing documents), new authoring tools will be needed that are easier to use, more intuitive
- XML will require the adoption of a method for defining formatting information as there are no set semantics
- publishing is moving to a pull versus a push model
with a high degree of personalization, i.e., document consumers
will want to tailor the documents they receive to be what they
want, not what the publisher decided to dispense
- a lot of the arguments for XML were really just
arguments for SGML on the Web, i.e., the ability to have documents
with a user-defined markup vocabulary to support searching, filtering,
and reuse
- companies using DTDs with XML will still incur
the start-up costs associated with SGML, such as document analysis;
DTD creation; training; consultancy; system integration, etc.
- for the technicians we heard that SGML will be easier to implement and write code for (remember the quote of two weeks to build an XML parser)
- the cost of tools may come down for XML for a couple of reasons: (1) they are easier to build because the specification is simpler, and (2) if XML becomes the language of the Web, the market size will swell bringing the unit cost of products down
During the conference, SoftQuad issued a press release announcing its support for XML, as reported (see elsewhere in the Newsletter).
