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Re: [xml-dev] help w/ an intro XML talk
- From: Tom Bradford <bradford@dbxmlgroup.com>
- To: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 09:53:59 -0700
Tim Bray wrote:
> What I find works well is to show four slides. The first is
> a sample of HTML, with all the usual HTML problems, unclosed
> tags, the <IMG> element with no end-tag, unquoted attribute
> values, no enclosing tag pair for the whole doc.
>
> The second slide makes it into well-formed XML, logically
> equivalent but different-looking and obviously much easier
> for a programmer to handle.
>
> The third has a teeny little internal-subset DTD that makes
> the thing valid - if you keep yourself to <html>, <p>, <a>, and
> <img> it's not too hard.
>
> The fourth has a pointer to an external DTD, presumably
> xhtml.dtd or some such, there's no need to go into the DTD.
>
> That kind of gets the basics about well-formedness and
> validity across. Where you go from there depends on the
> audience. -Tim
The problem I see with this is that it is a misleading track to take
with novices, because they'll interpret it as what you're presenting,
which is presentation in the form of HTML. There is already this
greater misconception that XML is a generalized replacement for HTML,
when it's definitely not. And if it is, it has failed miserably.
I would start off with a simple document. Maybe information on a book,
like title, author, isbn, etc... Avoiding the obvious comparison with
HTML is preferable, and should only be addressed much later in the
presentation, or if it's asked.
--
Tom Bradford The dbXML Group, L.L.C. http://www.dbxmlgroup.com/
Desktop, Laptop, Settop, Palmtop. Can your XML database do that?