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RE: Will XML change the character of W3C?

• From: Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@y...>
• To: Sean McGrath <sean@d...>
• Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 12:22:48 -0700 (PDT)

> >And "but for" SGML, neither HTML nor XML would exist. If you won't
> >learn your history as taught by people who were present at the
> >creation, like Len Bullard, try reading the XML Spec -- the first
> >line of the abstract reads "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is
> >a subset of SGML..."
> 
> Ah, but it ain't that simple by a long shot.
> 
> 1) HTML (according to TBL's book) was designed to "look like" SGML.

Ah! It's good to see that the clarity and precision of W3C specs has
historical antecedents heh heh heh... Reminds me of the URI discussion
on the namespaces thread heh heh heh...

> 3) SGML is an awesome intellectual feat with some really brilliant
> ideas but the standard is soooooo general that pretty much anything
> can be termed "SGML" if you hold your mouth right. Heck, I remember
> somebody posting details on comp.text.sgml years back
> about how to make  RTF (yes RTF) parse as an SGML instance!

So?

This is purely a historical discussion. At least that was how the
original discussion began. Technical quibbles aside, I have yet to hear
to hear the propositions disputed that as a matter of historical
record, (1) the syntax of all the MLs we're talking about (HTML/XML)
derives from SGML, (2) the community that drove the development of SGML
applications (for example, Jon Bosak) also had a (perhaps the) major
part in driving XML, and that therefore (3) XML cannot be considered "a
W3C success", since (4) absent the contributions of the SGML community,
there would be no XML.

> I believe that without SGML we would still have the
> technical equivalent of HTML (perhaps derived from TeX
> or troff or something).

Well, if my mother had wheels, she'd be a teacart. It's easy to
multiply hypotheticals. Sheesh!

> Are XML and HTML proper subsets of SGML
> in any meaningful sense? Not in this universe.

(1) I take it that you are proposing that the XML 1.0 specification be
revised to remove this "meaningless [sic]" language? (See citation
above.)

(2) XML is, in fact, a proper subset of SGML. That is what Annex L of
8879 does. Sheesh!

S.





=====
<? "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
    -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ?>

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