There are some differences. First, XML wasn't handed down from on high
as you
note. It is the culmination of almost two decades of effort on SGML and
then
HyTime just as XSL is informed by DSSSL. XML inherits much.
Some very dedicated people have invested a good portion of their
professional careers in markup technologies. The successes of SGML in
making it possible to create and maintain very large document
repositories
informed the fairly short transition into XML. These efforts were
maintained
by professional standards organizations that operated according to
processes
informed by decades of experience in creating international standards.
Overlapping efforts are a fact of life, but under the processes of say,
ISO,
these are curtailed to the degree possible by the charters of the
working groups.
So, no the processes are not usually as messy. But the messiness here
is due
in part to the use of the Internet and mail lists. IMHO, this also has
enabled
more people better access to the standards making process. Because of
this,
the speed with which a standard can emerge and vanish has increased.
This is a
somewhat new game. The players are learning how and the processes are
maturing.
Probably the most challenging area for XML is the role it plays as a
meta language
among application languages which do not share its foundation in a
syntax-based
specification. The discussion of property sets which emerged from the
many years
of trying to meet the issues in SGML should be considered because all of
the
Internet languages whose applications must interoperate are affected.
XML,
indeed, markup in general cannot solve the problems of interoperation
nor can
virtual machine based programming languages.
Len Bullard
IPS