Re: KISS (was: Parameter entity references in WF docs)

len bullard wrote:
> Unless the XML requirements are clear, adding more and more SGML
> features
> makes XML into SGML and only by sleight of hand gets rid of a perception
> some here on this list and in other places have worked hard to foster:
> SGML is Too Hard and XML is Simpler.  

XML is still VERY far from the implementation complexity of SGML. Do you
feel you have are very familiar with the SGML standard? Would you be
willing to undergo a little "quiz" administered by Erik Naggum? Would
you be willing to write a parser that implements all of the features?
Think about LINK, minimization, subdoc, asyncronous entities, etc. It is
good to argue that feature X makes XML too hard, but I think that
arguing that it makes it "almost as hard as SGML" is wishful thinking
about the complexity of the SGML standard. Remember: SP doesn't
implement all of SGML yet.

So now we are arguing about how far along the spectrum of complexity
(implementation time) XML should go: 5% or 10%. Some thought that XML
was supposed to be just SGML without the hardly-used crap. Others
thought that it was going to be a minimal extensible markup language. I
think that we have been successfully doing both: applications that are
not interested in validation have a very restricted set of features to
deal with. Applications that want to do validations must know a lot more
about content models, PEs, etc.

If we restrict paramater entities to the *non-required* subset then only
validating parsers will ever have to deal with them. Perl Hackers and
Browser Vendors will not. 

 Paul Prescod

Received on Monday, 2 June 1997 20:06:45 UTC