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Re: Wikipedia on XML

• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@ibiblio.org>
• To: Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@sun.com>
• Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 09:54:34 -0700

The very first sentence now seems wrong:

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification
for creating custom markup languages

XML is most definitely *not* a specification. It is a document format?
defined by a specification, but the specification is not XML.

However I'm not sure what to say it *is*. A language? A grammar? A
document format? Perhaps we should just follow the XML spec spec: "The
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is
completely described in this document." Thus the first couple of
paragraphs should be something like this:

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a subset of SGML that is described
in a W3C Recommendation and used to create custom markup languages.
Markup languages that adhere to the lexical grammar and parsing
requirements in the XML specification are called XML applications.
Within the constraints of the specification, a markup-language
designer has significant freedom in naming and defining markup
elements.

XML has been used as the basis for a large number of custom-designed
languages. Some of these, for example RSS, Atom, SVG, XSLT, and XHTML,
have become widely used on the Internet. XML is also widely used as a
file format for office-productivity software packages, including
Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and Apple's iWork. Many
configuration languages are based on XML including Ant, Java Servlets,
and ????. It is also commonly used to transfer machine readable data
between partners with heterogeneous systems; for instance, Federal
Express exchanges XML documents to coordinate shipments with
customers.


What do folks think?


-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@ibiblio.org

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: "Jim Tivy" <jimt@bluestream.com>
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    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>
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    • From: Michael Ludwig <milu71@gmx.de>

• References:
  • Re: Wikipedia on XML
    • From: Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@Sun.COM>