I have thought about this thread. Perhaps (my 2c) the problem is in mailing
lists rather than XML.
There seems to be strong complaints in the original post about the
diversity of the standard-making effort. I believe these stem from lack of
appreciation for other people's problems, which are varied and equally
urgent. For example, saying that what the community needs are "XML Editors"
discounts the fact that many developers (most?) will never want XML files
to be edited by humans. Not everyone is doing the same thing. The problem
may be that we're all discussing all of these things in the same place, and
it's difficult to find the information that interests us (now, shouldn't
XML be solving that?)
I must admit, though, that there is an aspect of the XML effort that
bothers me, which is the overlap of some of the efforts. I am thinking of
DCD/XSchema/XData/RDF for instance. I would like to see convergence or at
least common strategies, nice and clear with pictures and examples. Maybe
it's too early for that?
Regards
Olivo