RE: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

["Jim Tivy" <jimt@bluestream.com>]

Michael

I like this sentence because it clears up fuzzy thinking about what XML is
as defined by the W3C.  I leave it up to people like you and Tim who sit on
various W3C groups to do any revisions and rewrites on what XML is, however,
that would have to start at the W3C Spec level, not in Wikipedia. But you
are right about the millions of markup languages, so:

Modify 

People say the text <a/> *is* XML but more precisely it *is* a "document"
that comples with the "a" markup language which in turn complies with the
rules of XML.

to read

People say the text <a/> *is* XML but more precisely it *is* a "document"
that complies with a markup language which has <a> as a root element and
that language complies with the rules of XML.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 7:20 PM
To: 'Jim Tivy'; Tim.Bray@Sun.COM; 'Dave Pawson'
Cc: 'Pete Cordell'; 'XML Developers List'
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Wikipedia on XML

> People say the text <a/> *is* XML but more precisely it *is* 
> a "document"
> that comples with the "a" markup language which in turn 
> complies with the rules of XML.

There may be millions of markup languages that allow <a/> as a document, or
there may be none. It doesn't matter: <a/> is a well-formed XML document
regardless. I think this stuff about XML being used to define other markup
languages is a very confusing way of explaining things to newcomers. The
first thing to get across is that <a/> is (a document allowed by the rules
of) XML.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay