xml-dev - Re: compliance with XML advancements

[Chris Maden <crism@oreilly.com>]

[Matt Woody]
> I musk ask that you excuse my concern if previously addressed.

I think it is; I excuse you.

> Much anticipated is the surge of DTDs that have been popping up
> based on the XML technology. The latest that I've been looking at
> are VML, SMIL.  The current process of waiting for Netscape or IE to
> support the defined DTD with a new version after accepted by W3C has
> to be the largest stumbling block for XML.

The problem you perceive doesn't (or shouldn't) exist.  The reason
users have to wait for browsers now is that there is only one DTD,
with built-in handling by browsers.  When the DTD changes, that built-
in handling needs to be changed.

XML explicitly provides for multiple DTDs, and even implicit ones,
with behavior specified by a stylesheet instead of software's built-in
behavior.  The browser may have built-in defaults for certain DTDs
(like HTML or RDF), but the user community will not have to wait for
the browsers to explicitly support any particular DTD.  That's
precisely the point of XML.

-Chris
-- 
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