Re: Looking beyond the limits
So, without going into a long diatribe, I think that XML is neat. However, it is relatively obscure, overly complex, too "manual", and quite varied in its manifestations right now. It is destined to stay that way until it is either beefed up similarly within the majority of mainstream text editors or it evolves into a transparent or semi-transparent adjunct text editor interface that properly "converts" text on the fly, and on demand.
In the meantime, I think that for the next few years XML will be seen and used, for example, like DHTML compared to HTML.
Any comments? Am I wrong here?
Thanks,
-phillip
Philip,
I've been experimenting with a transparent extensible markup language that views pages in a browser window supporting this unique file format. It uses a pull-parser rather than a traditional hierarchy type XML XPAT parser. I call this extensible markup language Meaningful Text Markup Language, MTML. I have supported and displayed experiments of this in use at my website where I showed all the experiments in stages on line. Perhaps I'm still in a stage with it. :-) If you bother to search for it you will find two different cross-platform forms available to view.
So something that you might want to watch for is any progress being continued with XHTML and CSS, where possible attributes of tag-sets in XHTML might include a more human readable tagging system. The powers that be are going to forge ahead while maintaining compliance with SGML standards. XML and HTML are offshoot derivatives of the SGML standard. This means until someone crafts a useful pull-parser as a suitable interface it is my opinion that specific purpose tools like write-once publishing devices are going to be later rather than sooner around the corner. The solution for a human readable interface seems to be left out for the time being.
I have attempted to create a text environment that is the display of text based on a limited use of some HTML tag-sets while allowing the human readable extensible tag sets to coexist without damaging the user's reading experience. I feel that this is the direction the future must go and I have set out to attempt to build it. There is a very stable cross-platform experimental version at my website that shows what I mean. It uses the extensible tag sets to facilitate a relational text gathering system for the user or presenter of a file in this format.
just my 2 cents,
Mark
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