RE: Jade/DSSSL future

["Frank A. Christoph" <christo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James Clark wrote:
> My general feeling is that just as the future is XML not SGML, so the
> future is also XSL not DSSSL.

I get the same impression, but then, XML seems to be aimed at the huge
population of individual users on the web, whereas SGML has always been,
with few exceptions, a corporate sort of thing. Let's face it: the tools
that are available for SGML are relatively few and inaccessible (both in
terms of their price tag, and their user-friendliness) to everyday users.
But with all the backing XML has, end users can reasonably expect a large
variety of tools to choose from. Furthermore, even if XML is "worse" than
SGML (and I'm not saying it is), if it is at least more mainstream than
SGML, it will encourage more innovation from tool suppliers, which will
cancel out for many people the benefits of SGML.

>  When XSLT and XSL are done, there will (I
> hope) be nothing you can do in DSSSL that you can't do with XSL(T).
> DSSSL has not achieved widespread acceptance, and of course that's
> disappointing to all of us involved in DSSSL.  But I think we have to
> face up to the fact that the main reason it has failed to achieve
> acceptance is not because of lack of promotion or explanation or
> marketing (although that has probably been a factor), but because of
> real useability problems in the language itself.

What usability problems are you talking about?

> I have sometimes wondered whether I wasted five years of my life
> doing DSSSL and Jade, but I comfort myself with the astonishing fact
> that a little bit of their spirit now seems likely to live on in, of all
> places, Microsoft Windows.

Well, this is a rather astonishing remark of considerable intellectual
honesty; I'm sure it will echo on in the minds of all the list readers for
some time to come.

But I'm mystified by the last bit: how are DSSSL or Jade connected to
Windows?

--FC


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