Re: Ephemeral XML?

At 7:31 AM 1/13/97, Ralph Ferris wrote:

>As I wrote in an earlier message, I doubt that these companies will build XML
>browsers from scratch. I believe they will *extend* HTML, rather than
>implement XML. That is what many users will expect, and what is simplest to
>implement.
I am hoping that MS participation in this group, and their desire to
hotfoot Netscape with standards means that IE will implement XML support --
it's sure easy, and they already have a start on stylesheets.

Following is a long list of questions amounting to:
    "How do I easily start with current HTML capabilities, and use XML
instead, getting additional capabilities without forgetting what I already
know about HTML tags?"

   The answer is that you download the XML version of the HTML DTD, and the
default stylesheet that implememts those features. Anything you want to
leave unchanged, you leave unchanged, and anything you want to change, you
change. Thus XML does not have to have HTML tags built-in, but we can still
make the HTML->XML transition easy.

   The points about form and applet semantics are very good, however. We
must not forget that these must fit into our stylesheet language somehow.
But we should stay away from namespace pollution, if we can possibly manage
it, though.

>>    KISS is good, but if we can't offer benefits over HTML, we may look
>>stupid, since HTML has already got simple all wrapped up (and deployed).
>>
>
>But we also need to *include* the benefits that HTML *already* provides.

Raging agreement here -- at least as regards goals...

>If you want something else, you
>have to *override* that behavior, either through a stylesheet or by
>specifying compliance with an architectural form.

As I said above, I think this is best accomplished by modifying a working
example (the HTML in XML DTD).

  -- David

I am not a number. I am an undefined character.
_________________________________________
David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
--------------------------------------------\  http://dynamicDiagrams.com/
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Received on Monday, 13 January 1997 11:12:38 UTC