Re: request for XML resources
> / Cory Snavely <csnavely@umich.edu> was heard to say:
> | Keep in mind that a significant portion of XML technology hasn't much to
> | do with text processing but with databases and application development.
> | In fact it's my impression that's where the bulk of the interest lies,
> | which was (and is still) not the case with SGML. SGML was always been
> | largely applied to text processing.
>
> I don't dispute that that's true, but I think it's wrong to
> extrapolate that "XML is for data" or "SGML is for text". XML is as
> much a marketing victory for SGML as anything else.
>
> Making SGML a tad simpler made writing parsers easier. Making validity
> optional further reduced the "startup cost" of converting to SGML. So
> suddenly this 10 year old technology got a new lease on life and
> thousands of people discovered something that had been there all the
> time.
>
> Markup is good. Proprietary is bad. Therefore XML.
Yeah a couple of posts seemed to indicate I was somehow implying that SGML
was more suitable for text processing than XML. Maybe I wasn't clear. That's
not my opinion, nor the intended implication. I was merely pointing out that
XML has found broader areas of application, whereas SGML has traditionally
been applied mostly to text processing.
Right, simpler parsing, schemas as opposed to DTD--that's the
lowering-the-bar-of-entry strategy of XML that we all acknowledge. Those are
the factors which have made XML a pretty big splash in many fields and
applicable for a lot of uses.
c
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