Re: [xml-dev] seduced by markup

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>]

* Michael Sokolov wrote:
>There's OCD stuff in the XML world too, and it was there right from the 
>start, it just has a different flavor: DTD. The whole "DOCTYPE must be 
>conveyed with the document" religion created the concept of a document 
>that isn't complete without being processed by its accompanying DTD.  
>The result is a programmer's nightmare, but makes sense to a certain 
>kind of document purist.

DTDs are necessary to process documents that depend on them e.g. because
they use named entity references as re-usable macros, or in case of SGML
to permit various forms of shorthand syntax like implied elements. Then
they made processing DTDs optional and people did not bother to develop
and deploy infrastructure needed to work with them.
-- 
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