Tony Gill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ...And unless some useful implementations start appearing soon, DC will
> be overtaken by ad hoc or proprietary metadata encoding methods such as
> MCF or Alta Vista's.
Yes. We are a long way from that hallway conference in that strange
hotel in Chicago in 1994, when Yuri and Stu and Joseph wanted a card
catalogue index to the Internet. Nothing less, but nothing more.
With no single syntax gaining widespread support, and no stable set of
element names, and groups of people wanting to represent ever more complex
things, the simple stuff has not happened.
For my own part, I see no use in the conference in Australia, and right
now do not plan to attend for exactly and only this reason:
there are no definite fixed deliverables, and no firm agenda.
If we'd had a syntax after April, it is possible that HoTMetaL 3.o would
have used it in June, and very likely that SoftQuad H.i.P. would have
used it in December, instead of inventing our own.
Within a few months, DC may well be no more than history from the point
of view of an Internet Card Catalogue Index unless there is a single
concrete, simple, HTML/SGML/XML proposal fairly soon.
PICs has been suggested. Lou and Eric and Michael and I suggested an
SGML representation. Some people have been embedding DC in HTML in
various ways. Some people are using Z39.50. There is no emerging
consensus, as far as I can see, and so in practice we are if anything
further away from the original goal than before we started. If we had
said just this:
here is how you put Author in HTML.
we'd have done more good.
I'm sorry to sound negative. I'm hoping to hear some reasons for continued
interest in this area and in DC. I really _do_ want it to succeed. Help!
Lee
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