On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 09:44:56PM +0530, Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> Thanks for sharing the historical perspective. Was this an important
> architectural decision, while writing the original XML spec (i.e,
> every DTD-valid document must also be a valid SGML document) - or to
> say, was this a requirement/prerequisite for the original XML spec?
Yes. XML was originally called Web-SGML. The entire purpose of XML,
originally, was to facilitate the use of (a subset of) SGML on the Web,
and, specifically (at first) in Web-browser plugins.
> Perhaps, an XML 2.0 activity can rearchitect the XML specs, along the
> lines you outlined earlier.
Possibly, but I don't see strong enough market benefits to
justify the lostt in compatibility and interoperability.
The XML promise -- any XML processor can read any XML document --
is an oversimplification, but, even if you tone it down to
take "can read" to mean "is entitled to read", the extremely
high interoperability story of XML is a large part of its success.
Another important success story is of course XHTML -- which
relies on a DTD to define the HTML chracter entities.
Liam
--
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
