While in San Jose at the XTech '99 Conference, I asked IBM's Marie Wieck if customer interest was driving the firm's involvement with XML. She said yes and sighed. "You should see my travel schedule. Last week I was in Munich with customers. Tomorrow I'm in San Diego," she said. "Industry acceptance of XML is faster and broader than Java," she added. Why? "Because everyone has data," she replied. And everyone wants to understand what XML means for their data. The developers of XML are fond of saying that XML is just syntax. Jon Bosak, chair of the XML Working Group at the W3C, made this point at XTech '99. "XML is just like ASCII," he said. "We don't have ASCII conferences. Maybe in a few years we won't need XML conferences because XML will be so commonplace." Still, people come to these conferences trying to learn what XML is, and if they can fight through the hype, they can also learn what XML isn't.
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机译：在圣何塞举行的 XTech '99 大会上，我问 IBM 的 Marie Wieck，客户的兴趣是否推动了该公司参与 XML 的工作。她答应了，叹了口气。“你应该看看我的旅行时间表。上周我在慕尼黑和客户在一起。明天我在圣地亚哥，“她说。“业界对XML的接受比Java更快、更广泛，”她补充道。为什么？“因为每个人都有数据，”她回答说。每个人都想了解 XML 对他们的数据意味着什么。XML 的开发人员喜欢说 XML 只是语法。W3C XML 工作组主席 Jon Bosak 在 XTech '99 上提出了这一点。“XML就像ASCII，”他说。“我们没有 ASCII 会议。也许几年后我们就不需要XML会议了，因为XML将变得司空见惯。尽管如此，人们还是来参加这些会议，试图了解XML是什么，如果他们能通过炒作来对抗，他们也可以了解XML不是什么。
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