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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pezagent" data-source="post: 1254284" data-attributes="member: 15568">Hi Davin,Yes, I am passionate about this, I think because I'm dealing with some "unfinished business" I had as a kid when I first started hacking. My friends and I played D&D a lot and of course played Wizardry and all the first role-playing games available, and concepts like these (an interchangable universe) were always too difficult to organize or conceptualize for us, so they were just dreams. Now we have the technology to make this dream a reality. People can grasp the concept, but I believe the majority isn't digging deep enough to see the holistic (or meta) "top-down" approach. And if they are, they're not using the tools the way they were meant to. The result: a lot of unnecessary work, all done for nothing, that nobody is using anyway.Mm. When I read "task specific" I'm thinking application logic--and if that's what you're referring to I totally agree that a simple project such as isolating and marking up data seems to become this monumental undertaking for people. It's like, slow down people, one step at a time.For me, the projects I'm interested in and the work I'm doing, people need to know the fundamental approach to XML, why documents get transformed, and, especially for a vast gaming system, the concept of namespaces using XSD. People are still trying to construct DTDs, which are totally useless for the scope of any project involving so many resources. And you're correct in saying that the design will suffer. I think most people who joined the d20-XML group became frustrated with the lack of knowledge, support, and constant debate over trivial issues. I know I did. And the results of that organizational structure, that group, are clear: there really aren't any results. Chalk it up to one project, too many chiefs, not enough indians. Absolutely.Well, an application certainly has to take on some responsibility for itself. And it's important not to leave out the most important components of the application--those using it and those designing it. I think those sort of problems can be resolved easily with feedback. The beauty of XML is that it is extensible, and new elements can be added on the fly without too much complication. Of course, this is up to the application developer, but as it has been proven historically, applications that don't meet the demands of users become ex applications. There's plenty of room for development. Anybody can build a better mousetrap.Thanks for the encouragement. I have taken steps towards a better future for data exchange between d20 systems, and one of them was to create a new group, <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/d20-dataExchange/join" target="_blank">the d20-dataExchange</a>, which most people in this thread have already been invited to participate in. And certainly anyone reading this thread with a genuine interest to pursue dataExchange between systems is welcome to take a look and see if this group is what you're looking for.Best regards and thanks for the thoughtful reply,/johnny <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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