It seems as though much of this XML effort is trying to replicate what we've been able to do with styles in MS Word (and other word processors) and Quark or InDesign.

For at least a decade I've prepared copy in Word using styles which is automatically mapped through to Quark or InDesign styles. I can give them any name I want. I can assign them (in Word) to the function keys so I can quickly assign them. Importantly, when others are preparing copy, I can just give them a printout of the keys assigned to subheads, pull quotes, captions etc and they just hit the button to format correctly.

This is the standard o

And why, oh why, have we allowed "standards" to be promulgated that don't allow spaces in names? Spaces were cleverly invented to make things easier to read and were widely adopted over the next few centuries.

Programmers ditched spaces when memory cost several dollars per byte. This cost efficiency became irrelevant over 20 years ago (and the authors of the Mac OS duly took note).

Somehow, since the web came along, we've been thrown back into the computing dark ages with all these disallowed characters. If I want to name a style with spaces (or traditional typographic marks like the paragraph or section mark!) the system should allow it.

Until then, I'll leave XML as something that computer programs generate.

Still very amusing on the second read.

The complexity of XML seems to be masking its usefulness. I agree that in principle it sounds a great idea, in practice, it seems to be a new gadget for its own sake. Obviously it works for some - and I'd be interested in who it HAS worked for and in what publishing tasks!

OK, I won't blame XML for all the world's troubles.... I'm sure it has a place... somewhere... a very dark, orc infested place if Susan is right.

I would like to know some of the 'thousands of companies' that have made a successful workflow based on it. I'm wondering how many are printers.

I like the idea of XML. But for now, I'll stick to designing and let the right brain types hash it out for me.

i read the article with a mixture of amusement and horror... this is not just a story about xml, but about every other 'standard' that exists, from postscript to html, all of them are a nightmare, and nobody seems to know what is going on... i could go on, but i would just be repeating myself... thank you for this article... i only wish i believed it would change things!

XML is a joke created by those that do not know the problems and solutions of publishing in the world of print. Why do these programmer types keep on thinking up such stupid solutions. KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid.

I don't agree with the article because Susan is blaming XML when she should be blaming her employer.

XML has a time and place and needs to be set up properly to work. Trying to figure it out from scratch, with no previous experience on live, deadline driven data is just freakin nuts.

I think the moral of the story is knowing when to say no. Yes, unfortunately Susan got mixed up in something not of her making but should have had the sense to say "I don't know how to do that and don't have time to learn".

This is almost exactly the same experience I had with XML at a publishing company. The only difference was I was on a Mac and fortunately it was only a test. I laughed out loud reading about the author having to use seven apps to make things work. This rang so true to me. I thought I was crazy, but it's good to see I'm not alone. The concept of "push-button publishing" is a nice dream, but the reality is much different. There is far too much individual custimization in day-to-day publishing for there to be a catch-all solution. Enforcing a standard company-wide is it's own nightmare. Who's responsible when the tags are input incorrectly? Someone still has to go through the data and check everything. Maybe XML is the future, but today I'll stick with formatting by hand. Some of the auto-formatting plug-ins for InDesign/Quark (like InData) are nice but still require a lot of work upfront and a lot of double-checking. It's a good first step for moving in the XML direction though, especially for catalog-type work.