Re: XHTML

At 08:45 PM 7/6/99 +0100, George Lund wrote:
>In article <4.2.0.56.19990706133440.00a94b80@pop.encyclozine.com>, Alan
>Richmond <alan@encyclozine.com> writes
[...]
> >         I think the simplification was for people, not computers..
>
>The stated goals of XML (in the W3C activity statement) make no mention
>of making life easier for people to hand code stuff, but they do say...

         "Its simple syntax is easy to process by machine, and has the 
attraction of remaining understandable to humans. XML is based on SGML, and 
is familiar in look and feel to those accustomed to HTML." I didn't say 
'hand coding', but perhaps I should have said 'programmers' instead of 
'people'. Granted that there are freely available SGML parsers, but 
programmers still need to understand the syntax, i.e. DTD, and my 
assumption is that the simpler syntax of XML (over SGML) was designed to 
facilitate tools development. Else, as you say, why bother?
--
Alan Richmond
http://EncycloZine.com/ Expand Your Universe
http://WDVL.com/        The Web Developer's Virtual Library
[founder and former managing editor of WDVL]