xml-dev - RE: Will XML change the character of W3C?

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

[Sam Hunting wrote]
> > 
> >And "but for" SGML, neither HTML nor XML would exist. If you
> >won't learn your history as taught by people who were present at the
> >creation, like Len Bullard, try reading the XML Spec -- the first
> >line of the abstract reads "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is
a
> >subset of SGML..."

[Sean McGrath wrote]
> > Ah, but it ain't that simple by a long shot. 1) HTML (according to
> > TBL's book) was designed to "look like" SGML.
> > This is different from being SGML.

[David Megginson writes]

> I agree.

> I thought that HTML was most heavily influenced by LaTeX and *roff --


Well, here's what TBL wrote in 1996 (subject to correction by the
author):

<quote>
<snip>
HTML 
For the interchange of hypertext, the Hypetext MarkUp Language was
defined as a data format to be transmitted over the write [sic]. Given
the presumed difficulty of encouraging the world to use a new global
information system, HTML was chosen to resemble some SGML-based systems
in order to encourage its adoption by the documentation community,
among whom SGML was a preferred syntax, and the hypertext community,
among whom SGML was the only syntax considered as a possible standard. 
</snip>
<source>
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html ("Draft response to
invitation to publish in IEEE Computer special issue of October 1996")
</source>
</quote>[1]

This certainly suggests that the choice of SGML syntax and the SGML
standard was carefully considered, and not simply a matter of "looks
like". 

[David Megginson writes]
> LISP would have been an equally good choice

Perhaps if you're Erik Naggum ;-) -- but in fact this is not so, given
the arguments given by TBL above.

Again, the point at issue is the historical record, not whether other
technical choices, like LISP syntax, could have been made. I like
science fiction too, but that is not the point of this thread.

Sam Hunting


Note
----
[1] To be fair, TBL goes on to write "Though adoption of SGML did allow
these communities to accept the Web more easily, SGML turned out to
have very complex and not very well defined syntax, and te attempt to
find a compromise between full SGML compatibilty and ease of use of
HTML bedevilled the experts for a long time." Since the point at issue
is not SGML's complexity, about which we are surely all agreed, but the
historical record, I have deleted this portion of TBL's quote from the
main message.





=====
<? "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
    -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ?>

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