[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Text Markup Part II
Thanks all for the thoughtful comments. The next question (you didn't think I'd stop there !) "Why use a an XML Syntax for entire documents ?" What I'm getting at is that there seems to be either a transition, some tipping point, or perhaps a wholly new approach/idea that instead of just "marking up text" we should transform the entire document into a new syntax. The edge case of this is requiring putting a root element around every document. (in HTML or XML etc ...) It's not good enough that there is markup *within* a text but now we find ourselves having to actually transform the text into a new syntax. Thus we see things like Docbook, TEI , DITTA , XHTML ... and a slow progression into even the Data realm where everything is tagged and there is no mixed or free text. My question here is : * Was there a slow transition of adding markup then some kind of "Ah Ha!" moment where people realized they needed/should wrap the whole thing in a tag ? * Was there a legacy/historic (SGML?) reason why documents needed to be tagged from the very beginning in order to parse tags at all ? (A kind of inline file header/type/magic number ?) * Was there a natural evolution from tagging little bits of text to the point where it was felt that all of it should be tagged ? Or perhaps there were cross-purposes from different camps ? What I'm trying to get at is the fundamental rational between what appears to be two extremes not necessarily compatible, and why we ended up with only the later. A) "Marking up bits of text where needed" And B) "A full text markup vocabulary for encoding an entire document" My 'gut feeling' on this, not having been privy to the entire history ... is that it was an artifact of processing. That (it was felt that) processors simply needed to detect the *possibility of markup* within text at the start of a document and thats how we ended up wrapping the whole thing in a root element , thus crossing the threshold from "A document with marked up text" to "A Markup formatted/schema based document for encoding text". Comments ? Again thanks for your patience. ---------------------------------------- David A. Lee dlee@calldei.com http://www.xmlsh.org
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] |
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|