Simon St.Laurent has
published,
for the SML-DEV
community,
the first complete draft of a Common XML specification.
Subscribers of XML-DEV and readers of
xmlhack will remember the
manifesto
issued by
Don Park on
November 11, 1999 for a "Simple Markup Language".
Five months later the initiative is still going strong,
summarized
by Don Park as a "Simpler information model, simpler
syntax,
still XML. Barebone data language foundation for layering of
modular standards" or, even
shorter,
as "all about normalizing
various XML markups into elements".
SML being trademarked as "Spacecraft Markup Language",
the new markup language had to
change
its name
to "MinXML"
or "Minimal
XML".
The first complete draft of a Common
XML
specification
is not about MinXML, and
targets a wider audience than the SML-DEV community.
Simon
St.Laurent describes
Common XML as "A Middle Ground
Between XML and SML", a set of best-practice rules which
could be used as rules by every XML developer to write
documents that can be safely used by the various XML
tools.
The publication of Common XML is very timely, a few days
after a
post by
Peter Murray-Rust on XML-DEV showing a
new evidence
for the need of such a best practice rules document.
Comments and suggestions on Common XML should be sent to
SML-DEV.