Re: How to put XML on the Web

At 01:02 PM 3/25/97 +0000, Martin Bryan wrote:
>>><logo html-equiv="img" html-atts="src=file ismap=treat-as" file="fig1.gif"
>>>treat-as="ismap"> ...
>>
>>The shoehorning doesn't buy you 'backwards-compatibility,' and the quoting
>>issues and general inelegance would prove problematic, I'd bet. 
>
>This shoehorning is the only way I can see of introducing concepts such as
>Forms into XML without having to re-invent the world. 

What's wrong with the Paul's DSSSL approach, or a (cleaner, non-HTML
mentioning) architectural-form approach?

Is <form> support on the XML-wg agenda? 

>What we need to do is to deliver content-describing XML in a way that is as
>easy to present to users as a format-describing HTML file.

No problem, assuming easy-to-use XML stylesheet editors ;-) Unfortunately,
XML+DSSSL is hard to sell to the "Notepad" crowd.

>>Since the DSSSL formatting step is last on XML-WG's list, and folks here
>>seem to describe a need to take advantage of (reuse) the browsers' current
>>HTML rendering capabilities, how about a plug-in module to convert text/xml
>>into HTML? That gives you the formatting.
>
>No it doesn't. What about those elements that are not expressible in HTML,
>such as the maths, chemics, .... which are what differentiates SGML
>publishing from Web publishing.

What differentiates (well-designed) SGML publishing from (current) Web
publishing, in my mind, is the following: The former gives publishers an
eXtensible way to describe content, whereas the latter gives leading
browser makers an exten$ible way to describe formatting. So if MSFT or NSCP
ever decide to throw in a set of formatting commands to make equations
*look* good, then much of your argument disappears. 

Alan.

Received on Tuesday, 25 March 1997 10:12:37 UTC