Re: XML and GNOME community

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Thu, 4 Jun 1998 Daniel.Veillard@w3.org wrote:

> XML is really about to get as popular but will embrace a far larger
> range of documents.

There have been a lot of people that have said that various things were
"about to get popular" ;-) Remember Free3D? "Linux needs 3D to be popular,
you people should all bow down to me blah blah". Free3D has been dead for
about a year, and Linux is still doing just fine. 

XML is obviously more useful, but it's not the be-all and end-all of a
desktop, and I'm getting the (possibly mistaken) impression that people
see it that way.

> We need native XML support on the desktop tools
...
> Moreover, the DOM (Document Object Model)  is defining a common API to
...

I know Miguel has said he wants to use OLE2 for the component model, and
he gave a fairly good description that helps me understand what specific
benefits putting OLE2 in would give. However, I don't understand any
specific benefits of XML beyond it being a nice HTML replacement and
standard data interchange format. Without using any buzzwords or acronyms,
can you explain why it's useful to a desktop environment? 

(Doh, even GNOME is an acronym ;-)

>   I would definitely be happy to help, I already have some simple but
> usable XML parser code (pure C) and I would definitely join the
> programmer team if there is some interest in developping such tools and
> interfaces.  As Miguel can certify, I have been working with structured
> document code for quite a while, and I can certainly help on the design
> phase too to avoid getting caught with common pitfalls when designing
> structured document model and APIs.

GNOME definitely needs more people in the network-awareness (and
buzzword-compliance:) area.

Thanks,
-- Elliot
When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather...
	...not yelling and screaming like the people in the back of the
	   plane he was flying.