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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Do SGML and XML co-exist?
 Matthew Gertner wrote: > > Yeah? I always tell the same story about the origins of XML, so I'd be > interested to know if it is wrong. :-O Basically, goes the story, round > about the genesis of HTML 4.0 the HTML folks started to realize that > even with the best of intentions and a heck of a lot of hard work they > were never going to get even a small proportion of the tags that people > (and influential companies) wanted into the language. Somewhere in the oldenMailFiles, I have the request from an influential HTMLer to help "get it on track, they are on a suicide march". I read what the WG was doing and told Behlendorf that until they actually began to understand the limits of markup systems, it was hopeless, so he should start understanding SGML and drop the WebIsHoly religion. Later, I got the sad occasion to explain to a Netscape product manager for the browser that Andreesen's bold statements in France about the "propritariness of XML" were the rantings of a dieing exec. They waited for six months and by then, they were dead on the vine. Predictable, avoidable, and completely their own fault. Pennfield can rule stupidly, but MS's competitors killed themselves with their own ignorance and pride and press. > Moreover, the > undesirability of this approach, even if practicable, was starting to > become clear (witness the length of the HTML 4.0 spec). Every markup specialist in the world knew as soon as HTML was released what it was, where it would work, and what the flaws were. Everyone tries GenCode at least once. In the original form, according to Yuri, it was end-tagged (a la RTF) and some folks had to work with the inventor to make it a markup application. > So they started to dream up something along the lines of generic markup > using ghastly DIV and CLASS tags. This came to the notice of the SGML > folks, who screamed bloody murder and started lobbying for SGML, with > its time-tested approach to generic markup, to be the new language for > the web. No. It started earlier than that. SGML hypertext systems with stylesheets were already on the market prior to 1990. Some systems had been being worked since ISO8879 was a draft. Long before XML, the SGML community had debated it on comp-text-sgml. The problem was not complexity but the inanity of the HTML working group. Hytime and DSSSL, yes, these are complex, but to be blunt, put all of the XML specs together, throw them on the floor, and see how loud a thump they make. Beware facile demonstrations of simplicity. Bosak knows it was a show piece and that once the work was underway, it would fatten out. It didn't matter. > The reaction of the HTML crowd was immediate: not SGML, of all > things, it's far too scary and complicated! So some forward-thinking > types from the SGML community came up with the idea of simplying SGML > significantly in order to make it acceptable as a mass-market web > language. Whence XML. People had been simplifying the application of SGML all along. I had discussions with Charles Goldfarb about that at the very first HyTime meeting I attended. His answers were along the line that as long as the system was a proper subset, it did not violate SGML. He thought it strange anyone insisted on implementing all of the features of SGML given that some were there for particular purposes. It was Charles and Yuri Rubinsky that took IADS to a NIST meeting to prove that SGML could indeed be used for simple, cheap, and easy to apply hypertext. The reasons we were writing conformance tests for the US Navy was that none existed so no one knew how to buy an SGML system. If you asked SoftQuad or ArborText or Datalogics, the multiplicity of answers was staggering. Hungry, desperate competitors make bad advisors for conformance, The SGML Way, it was called, and with that, competitors eliminated simple solutions in favor of a spectre they couldn't themselves enunciate in concordance. Once the money was there, it didn't matter. XML was SGML On The Web when the idea was introduced at the Vancouver meetings. Some of us had heard the rumblings and were ready to support it. I for one was not prepared for the coup d'etat that followed but I could see it coming after an argument with Jean Paoli in the hallway about how to go about it. He kept insisting "it must be simple, it must be easy" and I replied, "no one disagrees, but it must be SGML." At that moment, I realized what was coming and that the SGMLers whose hopes that Microsoft sponsorship was a new hope would get what the wanted. Yuri had told me a year or so earlier, "Yes Len, I know HTML is hopeless, but for the first time, SoftQuad is actually making money." > Am I close? Assuming so, technical issues certainly were the primary > motivating factor for XML. Not really. It was something doable technically and we had the existence proofs. After that, it was a political exercise in divesting ISO of authority and conferring it on the W3C. There are some stories you don't hear, Matthew, and some of them are involve some very old and bitter rivalries for control. Those had weakened the community considerably. The CALS days were fairly flush, but even then, the WYSIWYG Wars had weakened the Republic, so the advent of the Empire was easy to fortell. > Denying this is a pretty extreme view (not > that this surprises me, Len :-). The "features of the practice" may not > be all that different, but the fact that to write a conformant SGML > parser you needed (according to one statement I heard at an SGML > conference as XML was coming to the fore) "to have the resources of the > U.S. government or to be James Clark" Point was, we already had a conformant parser. The issues revolved around the anemia of using the web transport mechanisms and stateless protocols. SGML requires the use of the DTD to do some magick. Sensible designers knew that wasn't necessary. > surely had something to do with > the chorus of demands for simplication in exchange for ubiquity. Not > everything is a money-driven conspiracy. Not everything is. IADS was designed and coded by a political science major and a photographer. You see, sometimes, it doesn't pay to be a computer scientist contending with the More Meta Than Thou crowd. Essentially, even when you have a full toolkit, you may only need a screwdriver. It doesn't matter now, but since defending XML against the ravages of possible upstarts such as SML sounds a lot like Stalin defending against Trotsky, it helps to have a few dialogues for historians to mulch later. len xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...) 
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