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From: "Tom Bradford" <bradford@d...>
> - If XML, as a specification, is meant to be able to stand on
> its own for 1000 years (as has been said
I don't believe it is. That was a goal of SGML's, and so XML
inherits it to some extent. SGML's approach was
- text based, so simple tools can at least appraise it
- rigorous description of the notation used,
- generalized markup, to factor out processing issues notably
presentation
- flexibility to support lots of different notations, because
notations and fashions change
- explicit indications of system-specific data where there is no way to
transmit to the future the details (i.e. SDATA entities, which are signals
to consumer-side technicians "you need to figure out how to handle this")
XML supports the first three, the second last one is not so important now
that people are <pointy>-headed, and the last
is not so important now that Unicode is the document character
set.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
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