Re: ERB meeting, 30 October 1996

I just read Lee's analysis of the fragility of the NET trickeries
proposed for XML (message resent as <199610310415.XAA24860@www19.w3.org>).

All this trickery does indeed get very fragile.  There is a proposal
that will probably be considered at the combined ISO/ANSI meeting
the week before SGML '96 that proposes a neat solution using
different closes as well as opens for start- and end-tags.  Among
other things, it requires that EMPTY or CONREFed elements use the
STAGO and the ETAGC for their "start"-tag.  For example, if STAGC
were "/>" and ETAGC were ">", then "<x/>..<y>..</x> would be an
x element with content that included an empty y element.

Rather than slavishly trying to jam XML into the existing SGML syntax,
which wasn't intended to cope with the things we are here trying to
deal with, couldn't we design things like this in consultation with
the SGML RG and have a sensible syntax for both XML and SGML/Revised?
Then get busy and push/help the revision to get finalized.  We'll
get a much better XML and probably a better SGML as well.

Dave Peterson
SGMLWorks!

davep@acm.org

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 1996 23:41:06 UTC