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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: RDF syntax
 vdv@d... (Eric van der Vlist) writes: >I am really wondering if the reason of the success of XML is really >the simplification over SGML as it has been written so many times. >This simplification has helped, but SGML (or any kind of other derived >markup language) would probably invaded the web anyway just because >this was a real need at that point in time. Wow. I still hated SGML when I found XML in the first place. I'd encountered SGML before I found HTML, when I was doing HyperCard work in hypertext and was looking for prospects beyond HyperCard. I can't imagine generic SGML reaching the Web. Not that SGML is bad - I've learned an incredible amount from the SGML experience since overcoming my aversion - but for reasons that (I think) have also impeded ASN.1: 1) Limited tools availability. Either they were very expensive, supported only a part of the spec, or both, with a few exceptions. (James Clark is, as usual, responsible for some exceptions.) 2) Difficult to explain. The SGML Handbook is a marvel, but I can't imagine handing it to most of the people I've ever worked with and saying "do this". XML made it possible to explain the core - by demonstration - in fifteen minutes. It was a privilege to write a 350 page book on a 30-odd page spec. (Even NOTATIONs and unparsed entities seem easy to me now relative to the contortions I've dealt with elsewhere.) Unfortunately, the "XML family" suffers mightily from #2 at this point, so it's hardly like the magic X makes it immune from obfuscation. Now that SGML looks simpler than XML, maybe... -- Simon St.Laurent Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets Errors, errors, all fall down! http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org 
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