- From: Peter Murray-Rust <Peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 00:35:40 GMT
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
In message <330B7B1C.7062@hiwaay.net> Len Bullard writes:
> Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
[...]
> > A general conclusion is that you will need to give a good deal of help
> > to people who want to convert from SGML. There are bits which aren't obvious
> > and bits which you might expect to be there and aren't. This conversion is
> > not just the document instances, it's the whole lot. (This isn't meant
> > to sound negative... but it will be even harder for PhaseII).
>
> That is bad news. If XML is a complete break with SGML, then
> there is trouble ahead. The San Diego conference could have some
> rough moments if the attendees are knowledgeable.
An example (from "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN")
(BTW I use the FPI to identify the document, not its location):
There are about 100 such records in the file:
<!ENTITY aacute SDATA "[aacute]"--=small a, acute accent-->
^^^^^ ^^ ^^
The fields underlined are not parsable in XML.
This means that either it is not possible to use the ISO entity sets
in XML (which seems a pity), or they must be transformed (?who would
validate them) or maybe there is some cunning way round this problem
My personal opinion is that the SGML comment (which is ubiquitous in DTDs,
entities , etc.) will be the thing that causes most problems as the
change to --* *-- is not immediately obvious to those who haven't been
involved in the discussions.
P.
--
Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection
Virtual School of Molecular Sciences
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/
Received on Wednesday, 19 February 1997 19:51:41 UTC