The Future of XML

A Community Session

Liam Quin, W3C

May 2005

http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/0513-quin-xmlfuture/

Overview

1. How We Got Here
2. Where We Are
3. The Near Future
4. Where We're Going
5. The Panelists
6. Questions

How We Got Here

• SGML, HyTime, DSSSL
• Yuri and the Semantic Promise
• Complex documents: repair manuals, documentation

Where We are: XML Unchangeable

Where We Are: Principles We Must Not Change Unknowingly

• Accessibility
• Internationalization
• The Author Owns the Data, not the Application
• XML data can be validated in multiple ways
• View Source and Ease of Learning

• XML as Infrastructure

  • stable foundation
  • royalty free

The Present And Near Future

• XML 1.1 didn't win an Oscar
• XSLT 2, XQuery, Schema 1.1 all coming soon
• xml:id progressing

The Future

• XML Versioning?
• XSL-FO, Style, Multimedia?
• Schema, Relax, Schema Lite?
• Linking?
• Efficient (Binary) Transfer?
• What Else?

XML Versioning?

• XML 1.x processor rejects XML 1.y documents
• Hence can't make small changes
• Should we change this?

XSL-FO, Style, Multimedia?

• XSL-FO is a widely-implemented internationalized way to format text;
• uses CSS properties; doesnot compete
• Should we make a more "designy" version?
• Should we push for browser support?

Schema, Relax, Schema Lite?

• W3C XML Schema 1.1 is on its way
• But some people use Relax or Schematron
• W3C XML Schema is hard to understand!
• Should we so a minimal (Lite) version of Schema?
• How does W3C XML Schema fit with other Schemas?

Linking

• XLink doesn't have wide adoption
• It's not even used in HTML
• But linking is central to hypertext
• Maybe we should do more work on linking?

Efficient (Binary) Transfer?

• Some people say they need this before they can use XML
• E.g. mobile phones, e.g. Adobe Acrobat
• not just about compression
• not about proprietary formats
• not architecture-specific
• it might break your application
• But it might really help a lot of people.

What Else?