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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The "what is XML" permathread revisited -- was Re:[xml-dev
 All things are fuzzy to some extent, but XML is far less fuzzy than most. There is a reasonably well-written specification that defines precisely what is and is not XML. In fact, the very first sentence of the specification is: The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document. A little later we have: Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML documents are conforming SGML documents. There's not much wiggle room here. Certainly there are things in the universe that are not XML, and many of them are useful. But that doesn't make them XML. Read the first sentence again. It says "completely described". This isn't a beginning. This isn't one part of the XML trinity. It is XML, and nothing else is XML. XML is often processed with various tools, and perhaps some of these tools can be made to process other non-XML formats, but that doesn't make those formats XML. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA 
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