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Kendall Grant Clark

Kendall Grant Clark is the Managing Editor of XML.com and a faculty research associate in the University of Maryland's semantic web lab. He lives in downtown Washington DC.

Articles by this author

An Old New Thing

In Kendall Clark's first week as managing editor, he says hello to new challenges and old friends.

Mozilla and Opera Renew the Browser Battle

Mozilla and Opera have joined together to drive forward browser standards, in an effort to head off the threat from Microsoft's .NET plans -- and route around a lagging W3C.

Putting ISBNs to Work

Continuing his "Hacking the Library" series, Kendall Clark starts the implementation of a web service tool to retrieve Library of Congress identifiers given the ISBN of a book.

The Courtship of Atom

The Atom syndication specification may move to a new home at the W3C. We look at the advantages this would bring to all concerned.

Politics By Any Other Name

The recent News.com interview with Bob Glushko spawned a rash of debate among XML developers. The topic? Standards, of course! Kendall Clark offers his own views, and reports on the surrounding community debate.

Six Steps to LCC@Home

Continuing "Hacking the Library", Kendall Clark shows how to use the Library of Congress Classification on your own book collection.

The Library of Congress Comes Home

Embarking on his journey to organize our media collections, Kendall Clark explains how the Library of Congress classification system can be brought into our homes.

Semantic Web Interest Group

Reporting from the first W3C Semantic Web Interest Group meeting in Cannes, France, Kendall Clark describes the wealth of activity in the semantic web world.

Community Developments

After its long focus on the W3C TAG, the XML-Deviant returns its gaze to the XML developer world, taking in developments in RDDL and the new "genx" project.

Geeks and the Dijalog Lifestyle

Much as we'd like, our personal media collections will never be purely digital. Kendall Clark embarks on a new column dedicated to the application of geek know-how to managing the hybrid analog and digital media collections that we own.

Reviewing Web Architecture: Conclusions

Kendall Clark concludes his review of the W3C TAG's Architecture of the World Wide Web document, covering good practice in the separation of form from content and the use of XML vocabularies.

Web Architecture Review: Representation

Kendall Clark continues his look at the W3C Technical Architecture Group's "Architecture of the World Wide Web." This time he examines the third of the key architectural principles set forth in this document: data formats.

Competing Claims and Interaction Types

Continuing his review of the W3C's Architecture of the World Wide Web document, Kendall Clark looks further at the principles set out governing interactions on the web.

Reviewing Web Architecture

Kendall Clark analyzes the W3C Technical Architure Group's "Architecture of the World Wide Web" document, newly published as a Last Call draft at the W3C.

The TAG's Town Hall

Kendall Clark reports from the public question and answer session with the W3C's Technical Architecture Group, which took place as part of the XML 2003 conference.

Binary Killed the XML Star?

The results of the W3C's workshop on binary XML are less than satisfactory, says Kendall Clark. He also covers a recent and pertinent conversation on XML-DEV about SAX interfaces to binary formats.

The Long, Long Arm of SGML

Commenting on Tim Bray's "UTF-8+names" proposal for creating memorable shortcuts for some Unicode code points, Kendall Clark sees the effort as part of XML's continuing struggle against the legacy of its SGML ancestry.

The XML Book Business

Kendall Clark comments on a recent discussion among XML developers about the unfortunate state of the XML technical book business.

A Web of Rules

In his second report from the International Semantic Web Conference, Kendall Clark discusses the importance of rules to the deployment of the Semantic Web, and highlights the importance of interaction between the academic and free software communities.

Commercializing the Semantic Web

In the first of his reports from the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference, Kendall Clark discusses the path forward for successfully selling and developing Semantic Web technology into industry.

Taking the Pulse of XML Editing

Reporting from a recent vendor conference on XML authoring tools, Kendall Grant Clark presents highlights of interesting tools and an assessment of current trends in XML content creation.

ISO to Require Royalties?

The ISO, a worldwide standards body, is proposing to charge fees for commercial usage in software of their standardized country, language and currency codes. This would have a wide-ranging negative effect on the infrastructure of the web and related standards. Kendall Grant Clark explains the situation and argues against the ISO's proposal.

The Semantic Web is Closer Than You Think

The W3C's web ontology language, OWL, was advanced to become a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 19 August. Kendall Clark explains why it plays a major role in making the Semantic Web a reality.

Binary XML, Again

The old chestnut of a binary encoding for XML has cropped up once more, this in time in serious consideration by the W3C. Kendall Clark comments on the announcement of the W3C's Binary XML Workshop.

Social Meaning and the Cult of Tim

Tim Berners-Lee's decision to take the "social meaning of RDF" issue into the W3C TAG and away from the Semantic Web Coordination Group has proved controversial. Kendall Clark reports on the debate between Pat Hayes and Berners-Lee, and asks if the "cult of Tim" is obscuring rational judgment on this issue.

In the Service of Cooperation

Kendall Grant Clark discusses BPEL4WS, DAML-S, WS-Choreography, and the likelihood that BPEL4WS will be the only high-level way of describing composite web services.

How (Not) to Grow a Technology

Grassroots chaos or death-by-committee? The choice is yours. Kendall Clark looks at strategies for growing XML technologies.

A Community Update

A bulletin from the XML developer community covering the growth of RELAX NG adoption, discussion on the W3C's approach to criticism and an update on the YAML experiment.

The Architecture of Service

An introduction to the W3C's Web Services Architecture Working Group, and its role in defining a coherent architecture for the currently chaotic ecology of web services specifications.

Internationalizing the URI

Kendall Clark describes the hold-ups being suffered by XML due to the transition of URIs to their internationalized replacements, IRIs, as well as reviewing a slew of new XQuery drafts published by the W3C.

At Microsoft's Mercy

The future of XML editing is pretty much in Microsoft's hands, writes Kendall Grant Clark, reporting on community reaction to the news that Microsoft Office 2003's much-hyped XML features will be restricted to the higher-end versions of the suite.

XML Isn't Too Hard

Kendall Clark looks at the responses from other XML experts to Tim Bray's "XML is too hard for programmers" essay.

An XML Hero Reconsiders?

Kendall Grant Clark assesses reaction to an essay by Tim Bray that claimed XML was too difficult to work with. Was Bray right, or is he out of touch?

Truth in Advertising

A survey of recent discussion on the XML-DEV mailing list, including controversy about XML subsetting in JSR 172, whether there should be a central namespace registry, and whether XML-DEV should find a new home.

The Social Meaning of RDF

The W3C is about to undertake a discussion of what the social meaning of RDF is -- what the real world import is of an RDF statement. Kendall Clark previews the debate and recent related discussion.

The Pace of Innovation

Kendall Clark muses on the apparent stall in innovation in XML technology -- is it a sign of failure, or a symptom of success?

Is There a Consensus Web Services Stack?

Kendall Clark examines recent debate as to whether the "web services stack" is a thing of fact or fiction, and also muses on the latest news in relation to web services patents.

RPV: Triples Made Plain

Kendall Grant Clark looks at a recent proposal for an alternative XML syntax for RDF: Tim Bray's RPV syntax.

RDF, What's It Good For?

Kendall Grant Clark ponders the hidden benefits of RDF, and examines the XML-DEV community response to a recent XML.com article on making XML documents RDF-friendly.

Community and Specifications

Kendall Clark surveys recent discussion in the XML community, covering XML 1.1, security considerations with XInclude and whether it takes James Clark to create a successful specification.

XML 1.1: Here We Go Again

In this week's XML-Deviant, Kendall Grant Clark takes a first look at the debate about migrating to XML 1.1.

TAG Rejects HLink

Kendall Clark reports on the rejection by the W3C's Technical Architecture Group of the XHTML Working Group's HLink linking specification.

Introducing HLink

Kendall Clark provides an introduction to HLink, the linking language invented by the XHTML 2.0 Working Group as an alternative to XLink.

Identity Crisis

Kendall Clark examines section 2 of the W3C Technical Architecture Groups "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web", concerning Identifiers and Resources.

TAG and the Web's Architecture

Kendall Clark reviews the first public draft of the W3C Technical Architecture Group's publication "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web", intended to be a definitive statement of how the Web should work.

XHTML 2.0: The Latest Trick

Kendall Clark looks at the first draft of XHTML 2.0, which makes some interesting and major changes to the current HTML language.

Look Ma, No Tags

XML's success can be measured not only in terms of deployment, but also in terms of inspiring competitors. Kendall Clark examines one such tagless competitor, YAML.

The True Meaning of Service

Kendall Grant Clark investigates the DAML-Services ontology, which ties together web services with the semantic web and could well play a key part in the web of the future.

Watching TAG Again

Kendall Clark provides an update on the progress of the W3C's Technical Architecture Group, responsible for overseeing the architecture of the Web.

Go Tell It On the Mountain

As part of the re-framing of the W3C's Resource Description Framework a primer has been produced to accompany the new RDF specifications. Kendall Clark reviews the new document.

TAG Watch

The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG), charged with making the hard decisions about the shape web technology, has now gotten down to serious business. We take a took at their progress so far.

All That is Solid Melts Into Air

Just when you think you know where you stand, someone suggests that the constants of life -- in this case HTTP and XML -- should be changed. Debate from the XML developer community.

XML 2.0 -- Can We Get There From Here?

Tim Bray recently made the first substantive proposal for an XML 2.0. Kendall Clark examines Bray's "skunkworks" project, and also the political issues that will inevitably dog the development of XML 2.0.

The Value of Names in Attributes

The struggle with namespaces in XML continues in the developer community. Recent discussion has centered on the wisdom of the use of qualified names in attribute values by languages such as XSLT and W3C XML Schema.

Extending the Web: XHTML Modularization

XHTML finally provides a way to deliver on the promise of XML and get meaningful markup back into Web pages. This article gives an overview of XHTML Modularization, the W3C technology for extending XHTML.

Browser Lockouts and Monopoly Power

Last week's controversial blocking of certain browsers by MSN.com was excused by means of a flimsy appeal to "standards compliance." Kendall Clark reports on the debate and the possible implications for the Microsoft antitrust negotiations.

Patent Wars: The W3C Strikes Back

In response to massive public comment on their proposed patent policy, the W3C has responded, inviting noted open source advocates to help them shape the policy.

Patents, Royalties, and the Future of the Web

The W3C's proposal to allow royalty-encumbered patented technology into Web standards has attracted much criticism and debate. Kendall Clark provides a comprehensive overview of the controversy.

Three Myths of XML

XML has it all, not only an interoperable syntax but a solution to bring world peace, end poverty and deter evil dictators. Kendall Clark debunks these and other popular myths of XML.

The Politics of Schemas: Part 2

Having established in the first half of this essay that schemas are essentially political, this second installment examines the relevance of this to the XML community, and avenues for further consideration.

The Politics of Schemas: Part 1

As the world is codified one schema at a time, what are the consequences and implications? This first half of a two-part essay examines why schemas are essentially political.