Loss of information going from SGML to XML

At 21:01 20/02/97 -0500, David Durand wrote:
>At 8:20 PM +0000 2/20/97, Digitome Ltd. wrote:
>>I aggree. But I *do* wish we could stop referring to SGML files as "legacy".
>>Surely SGML->XML is a "down-translation" not an "up-translation".
>
>Afraid not. You lose no information in going from SGML to XML,

...

>   Actaully, there are a few exceptions: as far as I can tell, the only
>place where we lose information with the current draft is in some rare
>content model with mixed content, in SDATA, where a meaningful string must
>be hand-translated to a numeric code, and separately documented, and
>(hopefully not for long), with PUBLIC, where a location independent
>perpetually valid identifier must be replaced with a method that depends on
>a particular technical infrastructure for resolution.

Also you lose information about external data entities: data attributes are
lost along with the distinction between NDATA, SDATA and CDATA entities.

James

Received on Thursday, 20 February 1997 22:11:38 UTC