Re: SERIOUS concerns about implementation

Peter Murray-Rust writes:

> If you install Panorama there is a directory called catalog, with about
> 35 files which are a mixture of popular *.dtd and *.ent.
> EVERY SINGLE FILE WILL BREAK XML UNLESS THE SYNTAX IS CHANGED.

It's hard enough to get Panorama to work with normal SGML :-)
But this is very useful information, Peter, thanks for identifying it.

> Why was <!--* .* *--> introduced?  

I have a sneaking suspicion it was introduced because C programmers
can't get a handle on comments /* unless they have an asterisk */,
and as they are the target audience for implementations, this was
done to persuade them that XML is not as hard as SGML :-)

> <COROLLARY>
> The result of this is that EVERY file I have been working with up to now
> (document instances, DTDs, catalogs, EntitySets) are broken w.r.t XML.  I 
> have to modify them, often by hand.
> </COROLLARY>

I think the intention was (?is?) that XML can be parsed by SGML parsers,
but there was no intention that it should go the other way round.

///Peter

Received on Thursday, 20 February 1997 10:13:10 UTC