Who started this OPML thing anyway?

Far be it from me to speak heresy, but this OPML thing doesn't seem terribly well thought out: if instead of sticking everything in attributes, the data was present in perfectly normal XML elements, then you could view OPML quite sensibly just by using CSS. Instead you have to use XSLT to display OPML in a nice way.

OK, well you can still make sense of OPML using XSLT, so it's all good right? Well, maybe not. Opera doesn't support XSL translations, so chances are your viewers just get a blank page in Opera. Less than ideal. (They helpfully suggest you do the transform on the server ... hello?)

While the creators of OPML might have thought it was a bonus that the text attribute didn't show up when you applied a stylesheet to the untranslated page, it isn't always what is required. If you don't want to see something in css you can always set display: none, so why put anything in attributes at all? Clearly, it's not so you can outline XML because XML is already inherently outlined.

I guess it's too late to stop the bandwagon. OPML is out there and being used, and probably isn't going to go away. One day Opera will support XSL translations. Until then, a whole range of rather nifty XSL techniques for maintaining pages in XML require server side transforms that could have been pushed out to the client.

posted by Peter Wake @ 1:41 am