[REBOL] REBOL and XML
From: sunandadh:aol at: 15-Mar-2003 5:03
Hi there (didn't spot a name in the email)
[was REBOL Flash and Browsers]
> If you want to push Rebol, get it working with
> messages and email in or with the browser
> along with it's own desktop browser with xml,
> xhtml, and it will be noticed.
Sounds like you've been quietly plugging away in the background doing some
great work!! Any chance of publishing some of the tools you've developed?
I spend about 20% of my IT time working with things like Cocoon. XML, XSLT,
stuff like that. That's a serious happening world, and it is all centered on
XML.
<aside>Personally, I'm not that happy about XML. It's hierarchical, and the
world is making many of the same mistakes that IBM made 30 years ago with its
hierarchical database IMS (I hope I'm the only one on this list sad enough to
remember virtual-logical child pointers and the other heroics needed to merge
two hierarchies built upside down from each other. XSLT's axes feel horribly
familiar after that). We were saved from hierarchical data by the relational
model (not that that's perfect -- but that's another story).</aside>
Vast swathes of the world's more active data is moving to XML. A language
that doesn't support XML in the same seamless manner that it supports flat
files is going to look very quaint before long.
The REBOL community has developed a few tools, but as Bryan wrote the other
day "I think RT has voiced the attitude that Rebol is also data and this
seems to have led it to look down on xml."
If true, that's a real pity. REBOL could be just the silver bullet the XML
world needs to make handling XML a joy rather than about as fun as
hand-carving HTML (I do a lot of that too). But at the moment there is almost
no overlap between the two worlds.
Or so I thought until I saw your post!! Maybe there's hope for us yet :-)
Sunanda.
