Recent discussion on the XML-dev list has taken
a bizarre twist. After extended debate on
"throwing out" chunks of XML, such as external
parsed entities, ideas were taken to an
extreme.
Rick Jelliffe, author of the Schematron, showed
his famed capacity for thinking the unthinkable
and released a parody
draft for XML 2.0.
Although Jelliffe's post was intended to poke
fun, it spurred some serious thought in Don Park.
Park posted
a suggestion for SML, "Simple (or Stupid)
Markup Language". SML would be a cut-down XML
useful for those applications which didn't need
all the paraphernalia of XML 1.0.
Among the proposals are:
- No attributes
- No PIs, Comments, Notations or CDATA
- UTF-8 only
- No non-character entity references
Park concludes with a request for comment:
"What do you guys think? Please do not get
caught up with
the list I presented above because they are just
ideas and
subject to change later depending on your capacity
to scream
convincingly. The key point to consider is
whether there is
a broad enough need for such a subset of
XML."