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   RE: [xml-dev] XML=WAP? And DOA?

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Scary why?  Because perhaps all the information you have 
been fed on a regular basis for the last few 
years turns out to be partially wrong?  That shouldn't 
scare you.  It should embarass you and make you mad.

All the answers? No, because the answer that is right 
in one local space is wrong in another.  SGML got a 
lot of the requirements for very large and non-unique 
cases of text systems right.  But, that is a problem 
space large enough that implementing it eliminates 
everyone but programmers with several CS degrees from 
major Unis.  Implementing a subset of it was done 
several times by people who didn't have CS degrees 
to begin with.  So, choose the boundary of the questions 
and you get a reasonable answer for that.  XML got 
popular fast partly based on hype, partly based on 
the then-powerful W3C imprimatur, partly due to the 
rampant greed of the web community at that time, 
and partly because it is a smart subset and relaxed 
the requirement for processing a schema at runtime 
in a separate syntax.   Today almost all of those 
conditions have changed.  Do we still get the 
same answers?

No to XML++.  That screws over XML and confuses 
people even more ("my precious!").  

Do this the right way.  Go to ISO and refactor SGML 
ISO 8879 as part of the regular standard review.
For crying out loud, learn how to use the system 
instead of trying to reinvent it like drywall. 
Have patience and arrive at the meetings with 
your homework done.   It worked for the XML 
WG and SIG.   After several years, it should 
be admitted we should have done this to begin 
with instead of plotting a coup and screwing 
over the system.  We needed a subset of SGML 
for the web; not a knife fight for control 
of the future.   Meatheads.

What you want for SGML, BTW, is not an SGML 
cookbook.   You want a copy of SP from James 
Clark and a copy of the SGML Handbook from 
Dr. Charles Goldfarb (Oxford Press). Neither 
are easy.  A complete solution never is.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul T [mailto:pault12@pacbell.net]


> > OK, OK, really nice thing should allow both, because
> > some people need to edit it in a GUI HTML editor,
> > but some people are editing templates in vi / notepad
> > And  I think that there is no possible markup that
> > would be good for *both* cases.
>
> You might want to have a look at SGML - you can support both syntaxes by
simply
> defining two SGML declarations. The DTD remains the same for both markup
> schemes but the instances are different. On top of that, you can assign
context
> sensitive behaviour to particular characters from within the DTD, allowing
you
> to process a csv file with a DTD.
>
> This may not be as archaic as it sounds. If you are able to separate the
data
> capture/modification/markup from the downstream usage with a normalisation
> process, then why not? We routinely still use SGML tools at the start of
XML
> projects - when the objective is simply an XML file, pragmatism beats
> standardisation every time.

Can you 'configure' SGML to use *both* { and <%
'mixed'  in a same file? Can you 'configure' SGML
for some other tricks with 'separators' ?

If yes, then, perhaps, it may be not a crazy idea
to try re-factoring  SGML into XML++ or XML--.
;-)

Maybe, SGML already has all the answers, it
is just hard to understand what was better to throw
out of it and it is the macroprocessing part of
SGML that should not be thrown out  ;-)

Rgds.Paul.

PS. I'd greatly appreciate a URL to something like
"SGML Cookbook".  Google is good, but some advice
from human being is always better.

Many thanks.

PPS. 'Worse is better' means "no namespaces, but
unique prefixes are sufficient".

So it looks like  there is at least one thing that
SGML got 'right' and XML did not.

Hmm... Scary...




 

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