Re: Recent ERB votes

Paul Prescod <papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> Mass delivery of large documents IS something that neither HTML nor SGML is
> used for today. I'm pretty sure I can't acess Jon's Shakespeare collection
> over the Web without downloading new, complex software (unless he is serving
> them through DynaWeb, which is not affordable for many of us).

(1) the entire bible is only approx. 5 MBytes -- not exactly a large
    database.  (I don't mean to denigrate what Jon did, by the way, but
    it pales to insignificance in terms of size when compared to the
    Novell online documentation, for example)

(2) It's accessible today in Panorama; whether you call Panorama complex or
    not may depend on how much of the source you've seen :-) but it's
    certainly affordable!

> If we could
> easily create print and online versions of annual reports, manuals, etc., we
> _would_ be able to attract people and programmers who do not today use SGML.

I agree.  Of course, empty elements aren't related to that.
And neither is downloading SGML databases over the internet...

> Again, the goal isn't to support HTML "du jour", but provide a smooth
> migration path from HTML to XML for the short term.

Then why wire in a list of HTML "du jour" EMPTY elements into
XML perpetuity?  The same program that converts today's HTML into XML
can change <BR> to <BR/> if it likes.

Lee

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Received on Friday, 8 November 1996 11:15:17 UTC