RE: XML and SGML (was XML & the future of tech writing)

Subject: RE: XML and SGML (was XML & the future of tech writing)
From: Rick Kirkham <rkirkham -at- seagullscientific -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 12:14:33 -0800


I haven't read any of Simon's books, but I've read others on SGML/XML and I
think a lot of what he and David are saying is going to mislead people on
the list about the what SGML and XML are.

> > Second, SGML was created for documentation purposes and XML was
> > created for programming purposes.
>
> SGML was/is primarily information biases, though not necessarily in
document form. It was/is
> quite successful for databases. That SGML is solely about documents is
gross
> misconception.

SGML is a standard for creating markup languages. In an extended sense,
"SGML" is sometimes used to refer to the family of languages that conform to
that standard. The only thing SGML is "about" is markup languages. Those
markup languages, in turn, can be created for any purpose you can imagine if
it has anything to do with text or data (or, in general, information) and
the tagging of such text or data. There are many such languages.

XML is another, more restrictive, standard for creating markup languages.
(And "XML" is sometimes used to refer to the family of languages that
conform to that standard). To meet the XML standard a markup language must
meet all of the SGML standards, plus additional restrictions. For example,
an XML language must have an end tag to be paired with every tag. SGML
languages don't have to meet this restriction. So every XML language is also
an SGML language, but some SGML languages (like HTML) are not XML languages.
The additional restrictions in XML make it easier for programmers to create
applications that can parse/process the tags.

> > There is a bigger lesson here for TWs, SGML failed, because if focused
> > on documentation, and XML succeeded, because it didn't.
>
> If SGML has failed, long live failure! SGML's failure still generates
significant revenue and SGML
> as a failure is still widely used in mature large-scale applications that
dwarf the miniscule impact of
> XML. SGML has not gone away, nor will it.
>
> Has XML succeeded? Hardly.

Given what SGML and XML are, the only way they could "fail" is if it were
impossible for people to create langauges that conformed to their standards.
But people have created many languages that conform to the XML standard (and
hence the SGML standard) and many that conform to SGML but not XML. These
languages are being used successfully. So both SGML and XML are "successes"
in the only sense in which that word could apply to them.

> For a start, XML isn't even finished. Most of the style language
> hasn't yet been defined, the query language is still a work-in-progress
...

XML *is* finished. It is a standard that was created (and finished) a few
years ago. What Simon probably means is that XSLT, a set of rules for
transforming XML documents from a hard-for-humans-to-read form into an
easy-for-humans-to-read form, is not yet complete.

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