In the July 1997 issue of EXE:The Software Developers'
Magazine there was an article of mine on XML which I ended
with this speculation:
"It's possible to look away from the small print of the XML
proposal to the larger picture of real world documents
perhaps sceptical of the changes being asked for [by W3C].
Arguably though XML is the best attempt yet to move on from
so-called plain text as the lowest common denominator for
document interchange... somewhere in my mind's dark recesses
I recall that Microsoft Word is based on an implicit
structured outline model of documents; what price Word 9 or
10 coming XML-enabled with a DTD to cover all documents ever
produced by versions 1 through 8?"
(If you would like a copy of the article point your whatsit
at http://www.dotexe.co.uk/ or email me and I will send you
the SGML original. Please allow for the fact that it was
written February based on the 1st XML draft.)
The news is that this scenario might not be that far away:
"Microsoft CEO Bill Gates recently said that XML will be the
data format for Office and HTML will be the display
standard." I have the following reference for this:
Vendors to push XML as all-purpose Web middleware format
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?97121.exml.htm
Some news. If you have that killer XML app in the works,
you'd better start looking to your laurels.
-- adrian
Adrian Orlowski
adrian@solero.force9.net