My problem with it is that it’s XML based. Of course that’s my problem with most of the internet ) I think XML more of a kludge to blogging than it helps. Why can’t news readers just read the blog entries, why must there be this middle-man format?

Here’s what I’d like to see: The blog entry should be stored in some description format. News readers and browsers should just be able to read that and add whatever style to it it deems necessary. I don’t believe this will ever be fully realized with XML, HTML, RSS, Echo, etc.

“The blog entry should be stored in some description format.” Well, that’s what RSS is. It’s the RDF Site Summary, RDF being the Resource Description Framework. The problem is that nobody really knows what RSS should look like, and there are many incompatible versions. Hopefully, Echo will fix this particular problem in the world of syndication.

Yeah, RSS and Echo are common structures, but it’s hard use them in the way I’d want to. I’d like my website to inspect the entries, find which 5 are the newest, and display them with the style associated with my website. With good languages, this shouldn’t be hard. But it is.

I’m currently drafting how I think a data description language should work. There’s so much potential that XML is just squandering. For instance, XSLT would be sooo fantastic if it wasn’t for the poor xml based syntax. SGML is also a great idea that faulters because it’s based on XML. Ditto SVG.

RSS isn’t about style, it’s about content. It’s up to the aggregator to provide the style. If you want your blog to look a certain way, tell people they have to use a browser.

“SGML is also a great idea that faulters because it’s based on XML.”

FWIW, XML is “based” on SGML. (SGML is the older technology.)

I haven’t worked with XML extensively, but I’m not familiar with the whitepsace issues. Entities like > are necessary, and the only other method I’ve seen of dealing with this sort of problem uses escape chracters. (\ is there, if you really need it. As for DTDs, I’ll take a schema any day of the week.

“FWIW, XML is “based” on SGML. (SGML is the older technology.)”
Yeah, my fingers were working in the opposite order from my mind.

“but I’m not familiar with the whitepsace issues”
Just ask yourself this: when is whitespace important in XML? When is it considered an element? When is it considered part of an element? and when is it just thrown out? When you figure this out, please inform the W3C, because they still don’t know

“Entities like > are necessary, and the only other method I’ve seen of dealing with this sort of problem uses escape chracters”
Every language uses some sort of escapes (to afford control), but XML takes it to an extreme for two reasons: 1, text isn’t really differentiated from commands/control. 2, XML defines controls for common elements (read & <) waaaay more than other languages.

“As for DTDs, I’ll take a schema any day of the week.”
heh, Well, we can agree on one point. Lets see how much Microsoft butchers schema though with their great schema migration