On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 10:51 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:Many industry acronyms are generic by nature -- XML, HTML, XSL, DOM, CD, DVD, XUL, etc. Yet they are all specific to one language or technology.
Um, all the examples you quote above are actual language definitions. Mozilla XUL is merely an application of a language. XUL itself is not a language, but a toolkit. There's a distinct difference.
I do agree/concede that XUL is a term coined by the Mozilla project, but an equivalent to XML/HTML/DOM/etc it is not. Rather, XUL is comparable to technologies like Qt and Gtk.
This is largely a matter of standardization. For instance, XBL 2.0 is currently in the process of being standardized, and XBL 1.0 was submitted to W3C. Is XBL equivalent to XML/HTML/DOM/etc., with regards to being a language and technology, or will it have to be a standard first?
Does XUL not mean Xml User-interface Language?
I think it officially standards for "XML User Interface Language", but it's referred to in some Mozilla webpages as the "XML-based User Interface Language" or the "eXtensible User interface Language". So what does "XUL" stand for as a generic term?
The real question is whether people would be using "XUL" as a generic term if Mozilla hadn't coined it first. After all, if you take the first letters of "XML User Interface Language", you get "XUIL". I suspect that, in fact, people like Gerald would be using acronyms like "XUI" or "UIML" (which I believe are the names of specific languages as well).
Hence you must see the ambiguity, and hence room for disagreement. Laying claim to such a generic acronym is asking for trouble.
Who's to say it's a generic acronym? It's not. It's a specific acronym that's be co-opted for generic purposes. It just happens to be an acronym flexible enough for generic use.
> You don't
see Microsoft objecting to MyXAML, do you? And XAML is a more specific acronym than XUL!!!
Perhaps this is because...
1) XAML already stood for "Transaction Authority Markup Language".
2) Microsoft doesn't claim a trademark on the term "XAML":
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/toolbar/3.0/trademarks/en-us.mspx
3) Microsoft frequently has the acronym in quotations, which suggests that they may rename the technology at a later date:
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/core/overviews/about%20xaml.aspx
For sake of argument (i.e. we don't do this), if the Vexi project was to refer to VexiCode as VexiXUL, would you object?
Of course he would. It's a trademark violation, and therefore a violation of the law. Why would you support such a thing? Because you don't believe the Mozilla Foundation will prosecute?
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