I'm a novice at XML, and my experience in typesetting goes back just twenty years, i.e., entirely post-lead.  Still, I like  to think I've picked up some notion of what constitutes good typography, and XML ain't it.

As I understand it, the whole point of XML is to separate form and content, the presentation of data from the data itself.  The inevitable consequence is to enable automatic (some would say "robotic") formatting that is often antithetical to good typography.  Take, for example, "The Book in the Renaissance," by Andrew Pettegree, a Christmas present from my daughter with nary a hyphen, and consequently "rivers of white."  One might have expected better from a book about the period that established the standards for typography for the next half millennium.  Maybe this was just a short-cut by Yale University Press to avoid stylistic differences between British and American English.  But I can't help wondering whether the absence of hyphens was a symptom of valuing content over attractive form at a time when many e-book systems simply cannot handle hyphenation.

Those who value typography can move files from XML to InDesign to polish "form" and make a publication more attractive.  One example was described recently by John W. Maxwell and Kathleen Fraser in "Traversing The Book of Mpub: an Agile, Web-first Publishing Model," Journal of Electronic Publishing 13.3 (December, 2010)  -- check the section half-way trough on "XHTML as a Gateway to XML-based Workflow".  But one gets the impression that many of those interested in XML are really much more interested in the "data" then how well it is presented.

Perhaps I should add my perspective is comes from dealing with scholarly publications on East Asian subjects, which means I regularly deal with CJK characters not yet added to Unicode and romanizations requiring diacritics that occur in very few fonts.  In other words, although I used to appreciate the separation of form and content, these days I'm not so sure the distinction is so clear.

David W. Goodrich

I guess I did not explicitly state my underlying point that much of what used to be typesetting has become file conversion, instead distracting myself with the notion that these days the niches where one can apply traditional typographic skills seem to be decreasing.  The trajectory of InDesign's development and the postings on this forum both point to the growing importance of electronic publication.  I cited the recent Journal of Electronic Publishing piece in part because I found it a handy summary of some significant issues involved, but also because it links to a downloadable script for converting XHTML to IDML.  I think that John and I agree that anyone needing to end up with XML should consider introducing XML early on.

Publishing continues its rapid rate of change, XML's role is only going to increase, and it would be wise to anticipate the consequences.

David