[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: ConciseXML syntax and compatibility

  • To: 'David Megginson' <david@m...>, xml-dev@l...
  • Subject: RE: ConciseXML syntax and compatibility
  • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:57:03 -0600

RE:  ConciseXML syntax and compatibility
Aww David, you just had to generalize and now we 
have to tussle. :-)

1.  SGML did not fail.  In its day and in its 
medium, it did quite well and lots of folks 
made money including you.  Its implicit processing 
model and syntax options were not going to be accepted 
on a stateless network and given the ubiquity 
of Unicode.  Otherwise, XML is just the bits 
of SGML needed for that and the parts we all 
knew worked without a lot of grief or deep 
markup expertise.  SGML was designed for a 
different time in computer technology development, 
when memory was expensive, CPUs were weak, 
9-track tapes were the exchange medium, 
and the delimiters reserved by each language 
varied like women's shoes.  In practice, 
most of the excess features were never used 
but they had to be there, or the standard 
was incomplete.

The tools were hard to write.  Absolutely.

2.  I never had a lot of trouble finding 
markup errors in SGML, but maybe I didn't 
use the right combination of all of those 
usually unnecessary features.  What are 
you referring to?

XML succeeded based on the experience of 
the parent language, the ubiquity of HTML 
plus the perceived and real limits to applying 
it, and somewhat, the web mania of the time.  

If we tried the same thing today, we'd never get 
it to a recommendation. 

len

From: David Megginson [mailto:david@m...]

Finally, I don't really see the need -- somebody suggests this kind of
thing every few months, and then it just dies quietly.  It's also
worth noting that SGML allowed extensive syntactic abbreviation, and
SGML failed; XML forbade it, and XML succeeded.  That's not the only
reason that SGML failed, of course, but it was a contributing factor
(SGML tools were just too hard to write, and markup errors were often
too hard to locate and fix).

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
 

Stylus Studio has published XML-DEV in RSS and ATOM formats, enabling users to easily subcribe to the list from their preferred news reader application.


Stylus Studio Sponsored Links are added links designed to provide related and additional information to the visitors of this website. they were not included by the author in the initial post. To view the content without the Sponsor Links please click here.

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.