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Re: Re: Microsoft XML


I'm not a big Microsoft fan -- I've been burned personally too many times by
Microsoft to ever really trust them -- but I am somewhat in agreement with
Michael here. The MSXML4 parser is VERY compliant with the XML standards ...
but only in those areas where they implement the standards at all. They have
excellent support for XSD (through an albeit strange mechanism, but the XSD
spec says nothing about how validation is performed), their XSLT parsers are
very well written, and in general they've been very good about making sure
that the XML the standards they do support are current.

MS lacks XML support in a few areas, however:

RDF - No tool that they use works with RDF in any way.
XLink - XLink is not supported by IE or by the MSXML parser.
SMIL - They currently use HTML+TIME, though recently they announced that
they would move to a SMIL architecture in their future products.
XHTML - While IE6 can read XHTML just fine, it is still just HTML to it.
CSS - IE6 supports CSS1 to 100%, but so do Mozilla and Opera. It supports
only a few CSS2 functions, and falls far short of either Opera or Mozilla on
this front.
SVG - Microsoft currently supports VML (although with poor documentation)
and has made no plans for an SVG add-on for IE6.  My guess is they're
waiting to see what happens with the Adobe IE extension, and will plan their
strategies from there.
DOM - The W3C XML DOM is not supported, though what I'm seeing in .NET makes
me suspect that the final version of the .NET architecture will support
something that is syntactically close. They do have a good XML DOM, of
course, it's just not the W3C model.
MathML - No support.

None of these (with the possible exception of XLink) are show stoppers. As a
frequent SVG developer, I could wish for more support there, and as someone
who frequently moves from JAXP to MS and back a consistent DOM would be a
nice to have, but I think this sets a standard for Microsoft that few other
companies have met yet either.

-- Kurt Cagle

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Beddow" <mbnospam@mbeddow.net>
To: <xsl-list@lists.mulberrytech.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [xsl] Re: Microsoft XML


> On Wednesday, August 15, 2001 3:10 PM
> Mark Galbreath wrote:
>
> > Admittedly, I am new to XML/XSL; this is from Brett
> > McLaughlin's "Java and XML," (O'Reilly 2000):
> >
> > "The Microsoft parser has been intentionally left out of this list;
> > from all appearances, Microsoft does not now or in the future
> > intend to conform to W3C standards.  Instead, Microsoft seems
> > to be developing their own flavor of XML.  We have seen this
> > before...be careful if you are forced to use Microsoft's parser" (p.
> 24).
>
> Well, O'Reilly believes in freedom of speech and allows authors to write
> rubbish like this, provided the technical content is accurate.
> McLaughlin's book is excellent on his core topics, but like some
> denizens of this list, he seems to be a knee-jerk Microsoft hater. Hence
> this ludicrous claim.
>
> Michael
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Beddow   http://www.mbeddow.net/
> XML and the Humanities page:  http://xml.lexilog.org.uk/
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>
>


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


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