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

[Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>]

> I thought that HTML was most heavily influenced by LaTeX and *roff --
> at least, it contains many of the same primitive objects.  HTML
> happened to borrow SGML's delimiter syntax -- very superficially at
> first -- but I considered SGML a pretty minor influence on HTML when I
> saw my first HTML markup (i.e. "cute, it uses angle brackets too!",
> not "hey, here's an SGML application").

This is not as I heard it. From my understanding, many of the
tags in HTML were already in use in CERN in a GML application
that predated HTML by a few years.

>  LISP would have been an equally good choice
> 
>   (HTML
>    (HEAD
>      (TITLE Sample Page))
>    (BODY
>      (H1 Sample Page)
>      (P This is a paragraph.)))

That's what I was doing at the time....

> I remember a big fight to get the early HTML specs to claim SGML
> conformance retroactively. 

Yep. There is a bit of mud-slinging to be had on both sides of the
fence...