Balisage Paper: We Just Can't Have Nice Things
Alex Miłowski
<alex@milowski.com>
At one point, Alex Miłowski was a contributor to many XML-related standards, projects, and technologies; days filled with pointy brackets that were never sharp. Whilst his attention is elsewhere now, nostalgia for better days for XML technology remains.
Abstract
When given a new toy, we may play with it too hard or in a way not intended, and it
just breaks, and is irreplaceable. But sometimes, breaking things leads to insights
and innovations. We're tempted to get rid of the things that break often because they
are bad
or poorly designed.
Often, they're just nice things we've failed to curate into better things. We have
had so many nice new things ... HTML, XML, SVG, MathML, XSL-FO ... that have been
broken somewhere, some time. What technologies will sustain value for society? We
just can't just have nice things — we have to make them.