Xml arrives at age 10

Hard to believe but Xml is now 10 years old. It has been an amazing decade of development. Those of us with a love (illness?) for this technology are happy to see it become so implemented. I remember when it was first published in 1998, I was trying to implement it with a text editor and the "Panorama" plugin viewer. I had no way to validate at the time. Then within a year, I was implementing it again with the new Xml support in Internet Explorer 5. Tools are so much better now.

Tim Bray has just written a great piece called "Xml People" about Xml's development in the early days and the people who were there.

For those who want to understand the original spec, Tim also wrote this great annotated version of the spec. I've referred to this numerous times over the years.

Relatedly, the spec is currently at Xml 1.0 fourth edition. There is a proposal to make the unsuccessful version 1.1 into an Xml 1.0 fifth edition. But as I've blogged, it has its detractors.

Happy birthday Xml!