I'm sorry, but "let's use XML" has only about the same information content as "let's use ASCII". I've got it! We'll send the information in... bytes! Astounding!
XML is a transmission and encoding format. That's all. We are sending LISP s-expressions over network channels. That's all. It's all just trees.
XML does not give you schemas; it does not give you semantics; it does not answer the question of how to standardize your tags in DTDs. XML is brainless. It has no content. It just gives you a nice popular acronym to rally around.
This is not to say that XML will not have its uses. Trees are good for some things. But let's recognize it for what it is, please: a tree serialization format, not a solver of all problems, and certainly not a distributed object messaging protocol.
The best response to "let's use XML" really is the same kind of response appropriate for "let's use ASCII". Okay, fine, use ASCII. But what will you do with it?
I've been doing this for years. In 1995 i came out with Shodouka, which is a mediator that replaces JIS codes with GIF images so anybody can see Japanese text even if they don't have fonts installed. In 1996 i created MINSE, a semantic expression language with a mediator that lets anybody see math expressions directly embedded in web pages. MINSE was special because, like this so-called "transcoder", it would translate the equation into an appropriate form for the browser: use Netscape, and you get nice antialiased GIF images of the equations; use Lynx, and you get a good attempt at ASCII art. It is still the only way to easily put math on the Web that anyone can view.
In 1997 i did Crit, which enabled anybody to make public annotations on any Web page for the first time. You might want to check that out too (source code is available). It makes all links bidirectional and allows you to make links from your document to a specific phrase in the target document. As a side benefit it shows you some useful metadata about the document which browsers often hide. Again, since it's a mediator, anyone can view or create annotations using any browser -- people running Lynx can attach annotations to anything too.
The whole idea of "Web middleware" has been around for a long time. I'm pretty sure i was first, but many others have done similar things since then (e.g. Anonymizer, babelfish, and so on). Rohit Khare wrote a nice paper in 1998 summarizing the idea and various applications.
By the way, bidirectional linking is not new to the Web. It was new in 1997, when it was introduced by CritLink. I encourage you to check that out, too. It lets anybody annotate any public web page using any browser -- no software required.
Wow, thanks. I think that's one of the nicest technical things i've heard someone say about me.
I wrote Pyxi. And it really isn't very well documented at all -- it was quite rushed, done in a couple of weeks or so (most of it in the last weekend before the demo).
An important point i want to make is that i do not understand the back-end code at all, and i didn't have to understand how it worked in order to write the front-end. I wrote Pyxi entirely based on a paper protocol specification which is now published at the website.
This means other people can develop on top of the back-end too. I only joined the project recently to write the front-end, and i agree the back-end code is pretty hard to read!
Watch for another release with more documentation and stuff.
According to this article the IBM patent was filed before the Unisys patent. Indeed, you'll see that the original application date of IBM's patent #4814746 is 1 June 1983, whereas Unisys' patent #4558302 was first filed on 20 June 1983.
The IBM patent makes only 18 claims, as opposed to the 181 claims of the Unisys patent, and claim 7 appears to be an exact description of LZW, by my reading.
I am not a lawyer, but it would appear that IBM also has a patent on the same algorithm. Have a look at patent number 4814746 .
Try doing "View Images" and look at page 4 of 12. As far as i can tell, that flowchart diagram describes precisely the LZW compression algorithm that Unisys also claims its patent on.
I don't know what the implications of this are. Does it mean that one or both patents are invalid, or only that the Patent and Trademark Office is incompetent? (Oh, i guess we knew that anyway.)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (January 10, 2001) -- Struggling computer manufacturer SGI today announced a major shift in corporate and marketing strategy. The former leader in high-end servers and workstations, beset by declining sales and large losses, today vowed to fight back with a new company name.
Extensive research by Landor Associates pinpointed the short brand name and silly logo as the single cause of losses. "The public doesn't care about high costs of hardware and peripherals, nor about the buggy operating system or fuzzy product lines. Tests show clients are really bothered about investing billions in equipment made by a company with such a short and meaningless name." said K.B. Landor, CEO of Landor Associates, from his mansion in Bel Air, shortly after flying back from a ski vacation in Europe in his private jet. Landor, 45, has two sons in Harvard and mansions in Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Los Altos, New York and Seattle, built upon his very successful brand-naming business featuring such high-flying clients as SGI, DEC, ILM, ELO, APP, N'Sync and TASP (The Artist Sporadically known as Prince).
SGI CEO Rick Belluzzo added "We have even been losing market share to Digital Equipment Corporation ever since they ceased to be DEC. Even Intel has five letters in its brand name fer crying out loud."
"The time has come to fight back. We are laying off any employees who don't have a middle initial and are aggressively recruiting senior executives with name prefixes", added Robin Van Der Lowe Smith-Jones, head of personnel services.
Industry sources are mum about the prospects of a turnaround by this legendary slumbering giant but they appear to have taken the correct initial steps.
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I'm sorry, but "let's use XML" has only about the same information content as "let's use ASCII". I've got it! We'll send the information in
XML is a transmission and encoding format. That's all. We are sending LISP s-expressions over network channels. That's all. It's all just trees.
XML does not give you schemas; it does not give you semantics; it does not answer the question of how to standardize your tags in DTDs. XML is brainless. It has no content. It just gives you a nice popular acronym to rally around.
This is not to say that XML will not have its uses. Trees are good for some things. But let's recognize it for what it is, please: a tree serialization format, not a solver of all problems, and certainly not a distributed object messaging protocol.
The best response to "let's use XML" really is the same kind of response appropriate for "let's use ASCII". Okay, fine, use ASCII. But what will you do with it?
-- ?!ng
What you're talking about is called a mediator .
I've been doing this for years. In 1995 i came out with Shodouka, which is a mediator that replaces JIS codes with GIF images so anybody can see Japanese text even if they don't have fonts installed. In 1996 i created MINSE, a semantic expression language with a mediator that lets anybody see math expressions directly embedded in web pages. MINSE was special because, like this so-called "transcoder", it would translate the equation into an appropriate form for the browser: use Netscape, and you get nice antialiased GIF images of the equations; use Lynx, and you get a good attempt at ASCII art. It is still the only way to easily put math on the Web that anyone can view.
In 1997 i did Crit, which enabled anybody to make public annotations on any Web page for the first time. You might want to check that out too (source code is available). It makes all links bidirectional and allows you to make links from your document to a specific phrase in the target document. As a side benefit it shows you some useful metadata about the document which browsers often hide. Again, since it's a mediator, anyone can view or create annotations using any browser -- people running Lynx can attach annotations to anything too.
The whole idea of "Web middleware" has been around for a long time. I'm pretty sure i was first, but many others have done similar things since then (e.g. Anonymizer, babelfish, and so on). Rohit Khare wrote a nice paper in 1998 summarizing the idea and various applications.
-- ?!ng
I'd like to second that recommendation. Marc based his book on a lot of the ideas that have swirled around this group (hypertext, idea futures, real computer security, smart contracting, etc.).
By the way, bidirectional linking is not new to the Web. It was new in 1997, when it was introduced by CritLink. I encourage you to check that out, too. It lets anybody annotate any public web page using any browser -- no software required.
-- ?!ng
Wow, thanks. I think that's one of the nicest technical things i've heard someone say about me.
I wrote Pyxi. And it really isn't very well documented at all -- it was quite rushed, done in a couple of weeks or so (most of it in the last weekend before the demo).
An important point i want to make is that i do not understand the back-end code at all, and i didn't have to understand how it worked in order to write the front-end. I wrote Pyxi entirely based on a paper protocol specification which is now published at the website.
This means other people can develop on top of the back-end too. I only joined the project recently to write the front-end, and i agree the back-end code is pretty hard to read!
Watch for another release with more documentation and stuff.
-- ?!ng
An additional note:
According to this article the IBM patent was filed before the Unisys patent. Indeed, you'll see that the original application date of IBM's patent #4814746 is 1 June 1983, whereas Unisys' patent #4558302 was first filed on 20 June 1983.
The IBM patent makes only 18 claims, as opposed to the 181 claims of the Unisys patent, and claim 7 appears to be an exact description of LZW, by my reading.
Again, i am not a lawyer...
-- ?!ng
I am not a lawyer, but it would appear that IBM also has a patent on the same algorithm. Have a look at patent number 4814746 .
Try doing "View Images" and look at page 4 of 12. As far as i can tell, that flowchart diagram describes precisely the LZW compression algorithm that Unisys also claims its patent on.
I don't know what the implications of this are. Does it mean that one or both patents are invalid, or only that the Patent and Trademark Office is incompetent? (Oh, i guess we knew that anyway.)
-- ?!ng
by Jai Natarajan
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (January 10, 2001) -- Struggling computer manufacturer SGI today announced a major shift in corporate and marketing strategy. The former leader in high-end servers and workstations, beset by declining sales and large losses, today vowed to fight back with a new company name.
Extensive research by Landor Associates pinpointed the short brand name and silly logo as the single cause of losses. "The public doesn't care about high costs of hardware and peripherals, nor about the buggy operating system or fuzzy product lines. Tests show clients are really bothered about investing billions in equipment made by a company with such a short and meaningless name." said K.B. Landor, CEO of Landor Associates, from his mansion in Bel Air, shortly after flying back from a ski vacation in Europe in his private jet. Landor, 45, has two sons in Harvard and mansions in Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Los Altos, New York and Seattle, built upon his very successful brand-naming business featuring such high-flying clients as SGI, DEC, ILM, ELO, APP, N'Sync and TASP (The Artist Sporadically known as Prince).
SGI CEO Rick Belluzzo added "We have even been losing market share to Digital Equipment Corporation ever since they ceased to be DEC. Even Intel has five letters in its brand name fer crying out loud."
"The time has come to fight back. We are laying off any employees who don't have a middle initial and are aggressively recruiting senior executives with name prefixes", added Robin Van Der Lowe Smith-Jones, head of personnel services.
Industry sources are mum about the prospects of a turnaround by this legendary slumbering giant but they appear to have taken the correct initial steps.