At 09:42 AM 27/5/98 +0100, Rzepa, Henry wrote:
In reply to Adam Hodgkin,
Why should we explicitly exclude XML and CML? Surely if they have a role to play it is a mistake to try and cover the same ground in HTML 4? Is HTML 4 coming from a different set of concerns than is served by XML?
I have just come back from XML98 in Paris where Jean Paoli from Microsoft and Bernard Feinman from Netscape gave plenary presentations on their support for XML. They clearly see HTML and XML co-existing. One of the highlights was that Microsoft showed their Office suite using encapsulated XML. For example, JP showed a multi-variate table in Excel held *as XML*. It would be trivial to export this and put it into (say) a multivariate statistical package or draw a multi-dimensional data view for navigation. With RTF and HTML tables this is simply impossible. MS highlighted the role of information components. They clearly see each discipline as providing their own specific tools for managing domain-specific information and they specifically mentioned MathML and CML as the way that they saw things going. We can take it as axiomatic that the easiest way for managing technical information over the WWW from now on will be using XML-based components. These will, if defined according to the Namespace proposal, interoperate with each other and will be easy to use in the next generation of browsers. I am continuing to refine the way that CML is defined and how it interoperates with other XML components. Later this year we should have a clear specification for XLink (the hypermedia spec) and this will allow many exciting things to be done generically (e.g. assignment of peaks to functional groups, descriptions of reaction mechanisms, highlighting active sites and annotation against sequence). The main thing that is as yet undecided is how to manage simple data types (Integer, String, Float, etc.). Since these are very important to chemistry, they underpin CML. (Coordinates, melting point, molecular weight, etc. all require such description). It is likely that I shall announce an interim version shortly which will be designed to be refined in the face of further XML developments. CML is a starting point for the molecular community - not a finished product. Anyone who has looked at the W3C processes will see how they define a set of goals and how there is a an iterative, but tightly controlled process, for proceeding. Henry and I are actively planning how to support this next phase. You will see it on this list first :-) P. BTW Netscape and MS both stressed the importance of open processes. They highlighted the roots of XML in free movement of text on the web. MS said 'data should be free' and NS said 'code should be free'. I agree with both these sentiments. It is clear that XML does not reduce the opportunity for competition among vendors - but it raises the level of competition above fighting by using syntactic incompatibility. We need to move in the same direction. chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)