"As expected, James Clark deservedly scooped up the "XML Cup" for contributions to the XML industry at XML 2001. To redress the balance in favor of the usual cynical sniping, I'm happy to present the <taglines/> Anti-Awards for 2001, intended to burst some overinflated XML bubbles."

People definately realise that although XML is very useful, a lot of crud is coming out from the industry isn't it.

The article is here: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/01/02/taglines.html.

Here are some of the award categories:

Most Egregiously Oversubscribed Industry Bandwagon

Most Spectacular Incidence of Committee/Project In-fighting

Lazarus Award for Seemingly Doomed Yet Surprisingly Persistent Initiative

Most Technically Deficient Initiative Kept Alive by Marketing Dollars

Best Use of Acronyms in XML Initiative

Most Inappropriate Use of XML

Most Liberal Interpretation of Specifications in an Implementation

HyTime Award for Specifications with Secret Hidden Powers

Bluestone Award for Aggressive Press Releasing

XML Conference Give-Away Most Unrelated to Product

Best Practical Use of the Semantic Web

This is really funny.

The tech industry suffers greatly when the over-hype machine kills credibility. Some cynical sniping is all too appropriate here.

Hey, is there anything in this industry that is not overhyped?

Great aritcle. One thing I find interesting is that the author mentions XSL:FO as a darling "for now". I would love to hear opinions on this view from any of the experts on this board.

We are using XSL:FO/FOP to generate dynamic printable reports over the web in a production environment. For us, XSL:FO fills a very basic need--the ability generate printable web content using a standard that guarantees we won't have to rewrite a major chunk of our code base in the future. IF FOP can't meet our performance needs, we are prepared to look into commercial solutions like PassiveTeX, XEP, and Antenna House. If none of those can keep up, but some proprietary PDF generator can, then we may have a problem.

I'd love to hear what other options are out there or coming down the pike.

Matt Savino

FOP? We did JSPs + tag libs that produced FOP templates that we then made into PDFs that were streamed down to browsers. Biggest problem is no good FOP editor. Cool stuff, though.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.