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I am dismayed that I have apparently been so unclear to some. Since this question does come up in my classes, I suspect that there are probably a number of newcomers to this list, and mark-up in general, who really could benefit from an authoritative reply. I originally started to respond to Mr. Maden's points one by one, but I feel that rather than waste bandwidth with my comments... I'll let Charles Goldfarb summarize the situation. The quote below is from the second edition of the XML Handbook, page xlv in the preface. I hope it is enlightening. For those of you who do not know, Charles Goldfarb is the "father" of SGML and has been a key player in the mark-up world. ------------------------------------------------------------- "Some claim that XML will replace SGML because there will be so much free and low-cost software. Others assert that XML users, like HTML users before them, will discover that they need more of SGML and will eventually migrate to the full standard. Both assertions are nonsense.. . XML and SGML don't even compete. XML is a simplified subset of SGML. The subsetting was optimized for the Web environment, which implies data-processing-oriented (rather than publishing-oriented), short life span (in fact, usually dynamically-generated) information. The vast majority of XML documents will be created by computer programs and processed by other programs, then destroyed. No human will ever see them. Eliot Kimber, who was a member of both the XML and SGML standards committees, says: There are certain use domains for which XML is simply not sufficient and where you need the additional features of SGML. These applications tend to be very large scale and of long term; e.g., aircraft maintenance information, government regulations, power plant information, etc. Any one of them a larger volume of information than the entire use of XML on the web." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope this is useful to those of you who have been wondering. Rod -- ==================================================== Rod Davison @ Critical Knowledge Systems Inc rdavison@s... ==================================================== First things first -- but not necessarily in that order ====================================================
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