RE: [legalxml-econtracts] Re: XHTML 2.0

["jmessing" <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

Let me throw something into the mix that may be as much technical naivite as intuition.

X-Forms, to my understanding, and Jason may correct me if I am wrong, is not tied to a particular mark up language. Could it allow the development of methods that can be used equally with XHTML 2.0 as other structural-presentation formats?

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Peter Meyer" <pmeyer@elkera.com.au>
Reply-To: <pmeyer@elkera.com.au>
Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 2003 11:40:55 +1100

>Hi all,
>
>I will post something early in the week as a possible approach. Just one
>point dealing with Jason's initial comments to John's points on XHTML 2.0
>
>
>>
>> E.  Will XHTML 2.0 be the market behemoth several of us are
>> assuming?  Will it
>> sweep all before it, so that no other XML grammars are used for document
>> authoring anymore?  If so, why didn't XHTML 1.0 have the same effect.
>>
>
>XHTML 1.0 added nothing much to ordinary HTML from the point of view of real
>document production. It is almost pure presentation markup. It is OK for web
>documents but useless for reliable content management and multi format
>publishing. Of course XHTML 1.0 did not gain much traction in the space we
>are working in.
>XHTML 2.0 takes a new tack. It appears to provide a generic structural
>markup that addresses many (but not all) of the objectives we are seeking
>with a clause model. Clearly, its a new ball game.
>
>If structural XML (as opposed to format based XML markup models such as
>WordML) is to gain any widespread acceptance among document authors such as
>lawyers, a complete infrastructure needs to evolve for this to happen. It
>has always been my thesis that this is unlikely to occur unless the market
>settles on a common schema. Without this, the costs of implementation around
>proprietary schema are prohibitive and people can't do the most basic things
>with XML documents they receive from others.
>
>Until I became aware of the XHTML 2.0 draft, I believed there was a big
>market space for a standard schema for structural markup of legal and
>business documents, along the lines described in the clause model
>requirements. There was no worthwhile generic structural model we could use
>(sorry DocBook).
>
>Now I am not going to predict that XHTML 2.0 will sweep everything before it
>but I think we would have to be clear about what might happen and why.
>
>It seems to me unlikely that XHTML 2.0 won't provide a general purpose
>application that will be "good enough" for a wide range of needs. It is not
>beautiful but it will do a lot. It builds on a huge base of HTML authoring.
>
>There will always be space for specialised schema to meet particular
>application needs. The issue in each case will be whether the development &
>maintenance costs of a specialist application are justified by the benefits
>conferred over those available from a more general purpose application.
>
>I think we now have to justify a new clause model against XHTML 2.0 to see
>if it is worthwhile for our application.
>
>I think we need to be particularly clear about the users of our standard:
>
>1. Do we expect that practising lawyers and other business document authors
>should use structural XML authoring tools or will it be mainly used behind
>the scenes so that most structural authoring is done by a relatively few
>specialist content managers?
>
>2. What benefits will our standard provide to practising lawyers that
>requires them to use structural markup?
>
>3. To what extent is it necessary to provide for the exchange of structural
>XML documents (drafts or otherwise) between parties?
>
>4. What sort of infrastructure will be needed by law firms and other user
>enterprises to enable these processes?
>
>We have not really answered these questions to this point. We (I) have made
>some assumptions about point 1 (see topics 2.3 and 2.4 of my draft proposal
>of 11 November 2003). We could afford to defer these issues because we
>needed a new structural model in any event. Now I think we need to take a
>more critical look at them.
>
>I guess my angle on this is that the business and market context is more
>important than the technical issues at this point.
>
>Perhaps we should now complete the requirements process so we can answer
>these questions (and others) and then make a better assessment of the
>relative merits of various proposals against the business needs.
>
>Regards
>Peter
>
>
>
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>