Re: [oasis-member-discuss] RE: XML - What, How, Why?

["David Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Alan,

 

Understood. 

 

"Try it here" is definately something we could think about for the OASIS site too - I like Tim Brays old example with the XML text for an article, and then the CSS rendered content.  We could adapt that for an OASIS document - and show that.

 

And then there are RSS examples today that are easy to grok - like http://ebxmlforum.blogspot.com feeding directly into

http://ebxmlforum.org with news items being feed via an RSS server - and using an easy online editing interface - no knowledge of XML needed. 

 

As you say so much of it now is invisible....

 

Thanks, DW

----- Original Message -----

From: AlanKotok@cs.com

To: oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org

Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 9:11 AM

Subject: [oasis-member-discuss] RE: XML - What, How, Why?

David, et al.

As a wise man once said, "I feel your pain".  I use XML regularly as part of the work at Science. But trying to explain the what, how, or why of XML to my colleagues is incredibly difficult. The problem seems to be the abstract nature of XML, and its inherent invisibility. 

The way I've gotten around this obstacle is by showing examples of XML we use in day-to-day operations.  And I've seen more 'a-ha' reactions with these examples than with straight explanations, even in the form of bullet points.

Alan Kotok
AlanKotok@cs.com
http://www.technewslit.com/
Editor, PublicDiplomacy.Org, http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/