It always comes back to outlines

The last time I wrote publicly about a product by Dave Winer it was also used for outlining. That was in the mid-1980s and the product was called Ready. It was a really sweet outliner that was able to run memory resident. This was before Windows, so being able to run in memory along with other apps was a cool thing. Anyway, Dave and I both thought Ready had a chance to be a breakthrough product. I decided to help out and wrote the user's manual that Dave's company, Living Videotext, shipped with Ready. I later wrote a book about Framework, a great integrated product from Ashton-Tate that was built around outlines. Neither product was a success. Dave did make lots of money not long after, but it was with a later product called More, which was about presentation more than outlines.

So I approach the study of OPML with some trepidation. I really like outlines, and we know how Dave feels about outlines. But how much of the public cares about outlines? My guess, less than 20%, maybe 15%. Luckily for OPML that doesn't matter. I'll be shocked if vast numbers of users decide to "outline" as a verb, but they will surely consume masses of data in an "outline" as a noun.

The problem with XML is that it is so flexible it will allow an infinite number of structures. We just need a few. We already have RSS, which describes a list of data items. These items can be blog posts in WordPress or news items on CNN and Google. Because OPML already has the majority of outline fanatics on the Internet involved, and because Dave REALLY wants the XML outline standard to be derived from his work, I can safely say that OPML will be a major outline standard in the future.

But OPML won't be the only outline standard. In fact, there is a guaranteed product position as the outline markup standard that isn't OPML. Not because OPML isn't good enough (I have no idea yet), but there will always be room for at least one well respected alternative to any standard.