XML - where's the beef?

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Kevin is trolling again... beware   :-)

So, while waiting for something to compile, I browsed 
a 2-1/2 year old article:
"Bridging the Gap Between SGML and HTML: The Potential 
 of XML for Technical Communicators"
 by Deborah S. Ray and Eric J. Ray

Among other things, they predicted that within a 
couple of years (approximately this past October), 
there would be both XML authoring and XML presentation 
tools in wide use, much as HTML creation tools and 
browsers were ubiquitous in 1998.

So, Deb, Ray and anybody else, what do y'all see 
as the current heavyweight XML authoring tools, 
and what do you see as the current standard in 
XML browsers?

Are there even some suitable tools that are *tending* 
toward pre-eminence and widespread use, after the 
manner of Netscape Navigator/Communicator and 
Internet Explorer (which, at version 5.x doesn't 
even have the keyword "XML" in its Help index...)

In one way -- inherent practicality and (relative) 
ease-of-implementation -- XML looks (still) so 
very promising. In another, it looks like it might 
be languishing or hanging-fire, waiting for some 
great watershed shove... that hasn't quite shoved, yet.

Yah, I know I can find tons of hits on Google... 
but really, we all know that those -- especially 
the ones near the top of the list -- represent 
only how canny the authors were in selecting 
keywords, or in buying their way to the top of 
search-engine indexes. That is, they don't necessarily 
represent what is the current state-of-the-topic.

What's the poop from the trenches, as we approach 
the summer (for us northerners) of 2001?

Who is using what to *make* XML?
What *are* you making with it?
And, what browser/reader do you expect your 
audience to use?

Are those that DO work in XML simply using it 
as an intermediary step, that nobody ever actually 
sees? You haul your documents through further 
conversion, to make print or PDFs or HTML pages?
Does XML get read/viewed and appreciated in its 
own right, anywhere?  Where would that be?
I don't hear people touting an "XML-reader" 
equivalent of Acrobat Reader. 

Getting back to the Deb'n'Ray article, for a moment,
it seems to me that all the exciting stuff we saw 
predicted (embedded video/animation and all that 
neatness) has been hijacked by advancing plug-ins 
to html pages (Flash, ActiveX, CGI, etc., etc.), thereby 
taking the impetus away from XML. That is, XML 
could DO it ... but who has any reason to care, out 
there in browser-land?

In open-source linux-land, they're only just getting 
Mozilla to near viability, and that's simply another 
html-and-standard-plug-ins browser. I don't see ANY 
hooplah about a soon-to-be-released killer XML 
viewing/browsing engine.  What did I miss? Or did I 
not miss anything, and the expected groundswell is 
not quite happening?

Jeez! I do long, rambling trolls, don't I?  If anybody 
read this far, what are your reactions, opinions, 
rants?

Regards,

/kevin





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