I feel complelled to note that when Liam Quinn polled the audience for anyone who was fluent in a language that XML 1.0 "excluded", there was nary a peep.

Those widespread cheers for XML 1.1 among W3C insiders have not echoed in the marketplace. Microsoft has no religious objection to this, simply doesn't see enough collective benefit from XML 1.1 to outweigh the very real pain it inflicts on the XML industry. Without truly widespread uptake, XML 1.1 simply adds one more variable to the already complex interoperability equation. That's why Michael Rys (NOT "Microsoft", although that is a popular opinion here) suggested recinding it.

There are lots of good ideas in XML 1.1, especially the more sensible alignment with Unicode and removing the arbitrary restrictions on the characters that XML can represent (although the continued outlawing of 0x0 is mystifying). Furthermore, the failure to note NEL as a newline character in XML 1.0 is simply a bug that really must be fixed at some point. These changes simply didn't add up to enough reason to create a new version of XML, in the humble collective opinion of those of us at Microsoft who track the XML specs and advise management on the costs and benefits of implementing them.

I do agree with Michael Rys - W3C should recind it, and at some point in the future issue a new set of specs that offer its features in a coherent package that has enough other goodies in it to make it worth a wide audience implementing and converting to . What W3C seens to be offering now is a death by a thousand cuts -- XML 1.1, Schema 1.1, future versions of the other specs that support XML 1.1, and so on.

Sorry, Michael Rys says it was Jonathan Marsh who made the argument about recinding XML 1.1.

beautiful picture Norm :)

Thanks, Libby. Though I think Stuart beat my efforts. Twice. :-)

In the original publication of this essay, I quoted Jonathan Marsh's opinion as if it was Microsoft's opinion. I had no business making that inference and I apologize for doing so. I have no idea what corporate position Microsoft might or might not hold with respect to rescinding XML 1.1.