Re: Capitalizing on HTML

> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:03:08 -0400
> From: "Steven J. DeRose" <sjd@ebt.com>

> We might, however, get SGML editor vendors (most of whom are represented
> here, so correct me if I'm wrong) to add a "Save as XML" feature -- most of
> them are doing something close to that already, since they don't generally
> minimize on output. . .

Speaking for one SGML editor vendor and guessing what XML might be given
the state of our discussion, it looks to me like the difference between
"save as XML" and what Adept (and many other SGML-aware editors) do right 
now are the things we won't allow in XML like declared content, maybe
marked sections, etc.

Put another way, if a user has a DTD with no declared content (and no
mixed content, if we disallow that in XML) and uses it in Adept to
create an SGML instance that doesn't have any marked sections, entities,
whatever else isn't in XML, then what they'll get for output today sounds
a lot like what we are saying XML will be.  

And if they do use marked sections and entities and stuff that's not
in XML, then there is no way to "save as XML" without losing information.
So, perhaps better than "save as XML" is an edit or validation mode
"restrict to XML".  Given a valid XML DTD, all this means is not allowing
users to "declare marked sections" and "declare entities" so this wouldn't
be difficult.

Received on Thursday, 19 September 1996 13:19:45 UTC