Re: [xml-dev] RE: James Clark: XML versus the Web

[Michael Fuller <MICHAEL.S.FULLER@saic.com>]

Roger Costello wrote:
> ------------
> MEASUREMENTS
> ------------
> SGML: 150 pages

The ISO standard may only be 150 pages, but I suspect you would 
be insane to try to do anything technically tricky, let alone try
to implement it without reference to Goldfarb's _The SGML Handbook_,
whose 688 pages weighs in at well over a kilogram.

To quote from one Amazon reviewer:
    "This book is, regrettably, the one authoritative book on the SGML
    standard. Given how broad and confusing the SGML standard is, it's
    not surprising that this book on it is equally opaque -- this is, in
    my experience, the worst-written technical book I've ever seen that
    is not actually inaccurate. But if you're doing serious SGML
    development, you have no choice but to get this book and to spent
    forever trying to make sense of it."

With which I can only ruefully agree.

In comparison, the XML specs are relatively (trivially?)
easy to implement and understand, well at least if you
ignore Schemas and the version 2.0 XPath/XSLT specs. ;-)

More seriously, XML jumped the shark when the Schemas
spec. came along.  Things were pretty good until then...

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