University of Phoenix WEB/431 - XML Design Goals
Ponder This
XML was developed in 1996 by an W3C Working Group which was originally called The SGML Editorial Review Board. If you know anything about SGML, you will agree that it needed reviewing, and changing.
It is a commonplace idea among usability experts that there is an inevitable and direct tradeoff between being able to figure out how to use something (ease of use) and the number of nifty things you can do with it (flexibility). More features=less usability.
SGML is nothing if not flexible, but the only people who can use it are people who devote their entire lives to understanding it. This has not lead to the wide adoption of SGML. With this idea in mind, the members of the SGML Editorial Review Board renamed themselves the XML Working Group and started to figure out how to make something usable.
The design goals for XML were (and are):
XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
XML shall be compatible with SGML.
It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.
XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
The XML design should be prepared quickly.
The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
XML documents shall be easy to create.
Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.