- From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jun 97 13:36:29 CDT
- To: W3C SGML Working Group <w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org>
On Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:21:15 -0400 (EDT) Len Bullard said: >All redefining the DTD into uselessness does is increase the >urge to abandon XML work and return to fixing SGML. That Amen. >The XML reference to ISO 8879 must be normative to prevent precisely >this kind of bad judgement and unregulated process. Amen again. I've said this privately to Len, and I'll say it publicly now: when the topic came up earlier, I argued against a "normative" reference to 8879 on the grounds that the XML spec already guarantees SGML conformance, and normative references undercut the self-sufficiency of the XML spec. I dismissed as paranoid the counter-argument that if there was no normative reference, some people would argue that XML documents don't need to be valid SGML, and that the conformance of XML to 8879 is unimportant. Events and discussion since that time have now persuaded me that Len and the others in favor of a normative reference (aka 'the paranoids') were right, and I was wrong. I now favor adding a normative reference to 8879, with an explanatory note pointing out that implementors who correctly implement what's in the XML-lang spec will automatically conform to 8879. That would at least help clarify the relationship between SGML and XML. There seems to me no chance whatsoever that any of this namespace discussion can possibly be regarded as sufficiently cooked to allow inclusion in XML version 1.0. -CMSMcQ
Received on Friday, 20 June 1997 14:43:39 UTC