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RE: Will XML change the character of W3C?

• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@e...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 18:25:03 -0400

> 1) HTML (according to TBL's book) was designed to "look like" SGML.

Yep. I remember this from about 1990 or so when it was announced.

> 2) HTML is not not now and never was, an SGML application.

It wasn't until about HTML 2.0. The fact that the applications
never implemented the standard is not the point. FWIW. I am not
aware of more than a couple of systems that ever claimed to fully
implement SGML.

> 3) XML is an SGML application only after you change SGML a bit.
> Many - not all - but many SGML tools that predate this, um, adaption
> of the SGML standard will not process XML correctly.

True, but again, that is because the do not implement SGML fully.

> 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.

I agree with the latter part of this sentence, but most of the great
ideas in SGML were around before it.

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

Sure, it's called Rich Text and is and IETF thing...

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

Well, one man's opinion does not the truth make.

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