[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Proposition: "SGML is Gumming Up the Works"
****************************************************** SGML is Gumming Up the Works, or Down with DTD's. Long Live Schemas! ****************************************************** <flame> I wish I had a clean concscience. That I could say "I'm an SGML expert, and I still believe ...." But I'm a newbie, and definitely NOT an SGML expert. Like "Samuel R. Blackburn" <sblackbu@e...>, I got interested in XML not because it is a good document formatting language, but on the promise that with XML, I can interchange Data! I'm a computer scientist. I see XML-Data, and think: "Hey, there are type definitions. And hey, this data file clearly contains instances of those types." But, stepping into the XML community, I'm overwhelmed by the SGML history of XML. I'm told: "No, conforming to type definitions isn't good enough. That is not Real Validation. You must be valid according to a DTD." (Perhaps XML-DATA seems to have died because it wasn't DTD-ish enough; I don't know.) And then, looking at DTD's, I find that they aren't even as good as BNF context free grammars. And BNF is much weaker than type systems, which we need and want. So, we end up jumping through hoops to write DTD's to express DATA which is very, very, very easily described in terms of modern programming language type systems. All the while, hearing a low chant: "What kind of cretin are you? You don't want to *validate* your data! (shock) You only want well-formed documents." -- NO and YES. I don't care if my document can be validated by a pitiful DTD. I do care that it conform to a real type schema! </flame> .... I'm not really mad at XML but, I think "Richard L. Goerwitz III" <richard@g...> is on to something in wondering if SGML compatibility is going to bring down the XML effort. If you have to be an SGML wizard to express easy things, then we're in trouble. Much of the initial selling of XML was: You don't need DTD's to be a good citizen. I hope we can honor that promise. -- Mark P.S. I'm optimistic about RDF, and am afraid that DCD sold out a bit towards documents. I want DATA schemas! ************************************************** [Why DTD's aren't as good as BNF] It's easier to have name clashes with ELEMENT NAMES than it is to create ambigouous BNF grammars. Several BNF productions can start with open paren function f (a:int) return (a + 3); All ELEMENT names must be unique. -- ============================================================== Mark Tucker tucker_m@r... Regenstrief Institute phone: (317) 630-2606 1001 W. 10'th St; Indianapolis, IN; 46202-2859; fax: (317) 630-6962 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/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe 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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