Mark Wonsil wrote:
>
> A few folks were unable to attend my talk on XML (I wanted to go to
> SIG-Image myself!).  I put the paper from the proceedings, the PowerPoint
> slides and the handout on the web at www.4m-ent.com/HPWorld2000.
>
> I got to thinking about the "Old" vs. "New" conversation.  While markup
> technology isn't as old as terminal connections, it does pre-date the Web.
> GML got its start in the late 1960s and became an official standard in 1987
> as SGML.  Let's face it, marked-up text files is hardly exciting technology.
> ("Press Release:  Our software package supports text files.  Wow!)  It's
> those darn B2B people who get folks all worked up that they are ready to
> throw the baby out with the bath water.  I find the under-lying concepts
> behind SGML/XML (separating content from presentation) to be useful in
> today's rapidly changing web environment.
>

Good point.
It is really a "battle" more of stateless/document centric thinking vs
stateful/interactive (transaction) centric thinking.

In watching the w3c, I've been surprised at how few improvements later
html versions had in forms or even line drawing capabilities, both
which could easily be improved without introducing sessions or
statefulness.  Line drawing could greatly reduce the need to transmit
images.  Just look at how much better QCTerm's forms look than
anything the web can do without a java applet (and most java applets
I've seen as well).

Richard

> Mark Wonsil
> 4M Enterprises, Inc.

--
Richard L Gambrell
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