This article is probably one of the worst and most boring articles on XML ever. It lists non-patterns (in one case, an anti-pattern) that are completely useless and either fail to address the problem they set out to or address a problem that doesn't really exist. Don't waste your time reading it. Oh, and it also has fun disparaging Perl perfectly gratuitously en passant.
Is it just me or is xml.com increasingly becoming a waste of otherwise perfectly good bytes?
Perhaps you're no longer in the target audience for XML.com anymore. It used to be a great place to peek inside the minds of those who were defining the bleeding edge. Today, I don't see XML's bleeding edge as interesting anymore. Getting real work done is more of a priority, and XML.com seems to have refocused on that goal.Is it just me or is xml.com increasingly becoming a waste of otherwise perfectly good bytes?
This article was pretty bad, but I don't think it was as bad as you made it out to be. There is definately an art to designing an XML vocabulary, and virtually no one has attempted to document it. I give kudos to XML.com for starting the dialog, but chide them even more for publishing XML fragments that are invalid. (The backhanded attack on Perl is invalid.)
I don't think design patterns were ever supposed to start life as something written in stone. Perhaps there's a good way to discuss XML vocabulary design as a set of design patterns. These certainly aren't the foundation patterns, but at least it's a start.
Re:XML.com
darobin on 2003-03-31T16:52:12
I think I can trace back the shift to not long after they sent out a survey, so you may be right. I don't really care about stuff being bleeding edge, I just like quality content. Even if it's targetted at beginners, it's usually possible to skim good introductory stuff for a nugget or two.
I'm not saying that there isn't an art to designing XML vocabularies -- there most certainly is one -- but I am however saying that the author knows nothing about it. There have been other articles focussing on the issue, notably the one about RDF-like vocabularies. The W3C has also produced an imho very good WD, the XAG on the topic, from the point of view of accessibility. I would have appreciated that someone pitching himself as good enough to write about XML patterns would have known about this document (though had him been good at it, I would have largely not cared about the oversight).
I'm looking forward to good content in this area, I'm sure it'll help us avoid some of horrors that fly around on a regular basis.
Re:XML.com
ziggy on 2003-03-31T17:04:30
Agreed. I'm willing to give XML.com the benefit of the doubt in letting this depressingly bad article through the filters because it was the best available article on markup design, or because the pitch sounded better than the article itself.I'm not saying that there isn't an art to designing XML vocabularies -- there most certainly is one -- but I am however saying that the author knows nothing about it.This article was not devoid of useful content though. The pointer to use Dublin Core would be useful to a newbie vocabulary designer who has not come across it.
Re:XML.com
darobin on 2003-03-31T17:11:40
Yes, I wouldn't have blamed xml.com if this had been the first article I'd seen there in the past three months that I felt was really useless, but that's not the case. It's part of a stream of boring articles, low on actual technical value, with too-frequent technical mistakes and that one happened to trigger the LowQuality-O-Meter.
As for DC, you're right of course, though DC happens to be one of those vocabularies that I can never bring myself to throw in because it seems so limited
:) XHTML (modules) OTOH is something I regularly import and feel is worth it.
