Re: XML vrs SGML tools [was Re: Capitalizing on HTML (was ...)]

At 08:24 AM 9/20/96 -0600, William D. Lindsey wrote:
>Paul Prescod writes:

>That gets us back to the "grandfather" situation.  This says that XML
>must be defined by the intersection of capabilties of some, yet to be
>determined, set of existing editors which have already defined their
>own version of XML.  How do we select that set of existing editors?

As far as I know, every existing SGML editor can output unminimized SGML
that presumes that newlines at the start and end of mixed-content elements
are not significant. If we define XML in that way, then all SGML editors
will become XML editors without any additional work. Does anyone know of an
SGML editor's output varies much from the others?

Even ignoring SGML editors, I wouldn't be surprised if the SHORTREF RS/RE
suggestion will break other quasi-SGML tools. I would be interested in input
on this point. How universal is SHORTREF support? As I understand 15.3, A
Conforming SGML System does not have to support short references. Is RS/RE
worth breaking compatibility with a majority of SGML systems?

 Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 20 September 1996 16:08:06 UTC