• From: Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@S...>
• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:30:01 -0800

On Feb 11, 2008, at 1:38 PM, Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> In celebration of XML's 10th anniversary yesterday, I thought it  
> might be time to post a suggestion.
>
> SGML became ISO 8879 in 1986.  Ten years later, the XML process was  
> busily examining how to build a subset of SGML, keeping the good  
> parts and discarding the rest.  XML 1.0 was the result.
>
> I suspect my suggestion is fairly obvious: it's time to look into  
> creating a subset of XML that hits the current 80/20 point -  
> creating something that is (learning from the previous project)  
> compatible with XML parsers, but which (again) does more by doing  
> less.

In 2002, I proposed XML-SW (http://www.textuality.com/xml/xmlSW.html)  
which retains namespaces but discards DTD's (thus entities and  
notations and so on) and the <!DOCTYPE>, also rolling in the  
Information Set and xml:base.   I still think it's a good idea.

<!DOCTYPE> is actively harmful when used in wire protocols.  I'd so  
like to get rid of it.

  -Tim

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: ten years later, time to repeat it?
    • From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>

• References:
  • ten years later, time to repeat it?
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>