a vote in favour of ditching PE's

[Tim Bray]
>> I want to lose PE's and am willing to accept that for people who need
>> to live in a complex-DTD world, they'll probably have to use Full SGML.
[Paul Prescod]
>It seems odd to me that we are going to add complexity to help people who 
>need to publish databases but remove complexity required by people who need to 
>publish large, complex documents adhering to large, complex DTDs. Aren'
>t large, complex documents with large, complex DTDs the reason we are 
>*here*? I am concerned about this shift in focus from publishing large 
>documents to solving the world's problems.
>

I am *really* happy that a PE-ectomy is being considered for XML.Their
complexity of implementation and explanation are at odds with the bulk
of the XML spec. and the famous "spirit" of XML.

Many people with SGML will stick with SGML as their data format for many
good reasons. They will down-translate to target XML. In this down-translation
they have many issues to deal with - not just PEs.  I say this is good, right
and proper. If we complicate XML too much to accomodate existing SGML
we risk alienating the pioneers currently hitching up their wagons and 
preparing to head west. I say, making [SGML->XML] more complex
is infinitely better than making [XML->Future Apps] more complex.

Sean

Sean Mc Grath

sean@digitome.com
Digitome Electronic Publishing
http://www.digitome.com

Received on Friday, 20 June 1997 07:49:05 UTC