Re: How XML is defined

At 09:03 AM 9/14/96 -0700, Tim Bray wrote:
>At 06:18 AM 9/14/96 -0400, Paul Prescod wrote:
>
>>Won't it be a Lot of Work to define something which is SGML-Like but does
>>not require a DTD? I had presumed that XML would be defined like this:
>>
>>"An XML document is a valid SGML document which..."
>
>Absolutely not.  Check out out clause #8 in our current "design goals"
>statement (http://www.textuality.com/sgml-erb/dd-1996-0001.html).  (By
>the way, the content of that document is fair game for arguments, it's
>not written in the stars).  But at the moment it says that the XML spec has
>to be formal and concise, and not exceed 20 pages.  It doesn't seem fair
>to tell someone who wants to write an XML spec that first he has to understand
>the SGML spec, then a set of deltas.

I didn't understand that, and I don't think that Clause #8 makes that clear.
Please consider this a request for an update to that document. I think that
it is an admirable goal, but as I said before, it looks like a lot of work.
Even the HTML spec references SGML, and HTML is a simple, fixed markup
language, not a meta-language (or "extensible markup language").

 Paul Prescod

Received on Saturday, 14 September 1996 13:59:49 UTC