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Hi Elliotte I agree that XML is not a specification but conforms to a specification. First sentence might be something like this... *********************** XML(Extensible Markup Language) is a general set of rules for creating custom data formats. For example, you may create a custom data format for Invoice data which looks like this: <invoice> <date>2001-12-12T12:34:10Z</date> <customerName>Fred Smith</customerName> </invoice> This example is XML because it uses the element tag <invoice> and child elements <date> and <customerName> to contain the actual date and customerName data. ************************ Objectives in this example are: - introduce the concept and give an example right away - XML lends itself well to examples.. - avoid less known terms like "SGML" and "Markup Languages" at the beginning even tho XML is Extensible Markup Language. This is a Wikipedia and should allow some general public entry. I disagree that Xml should be described as a subset of SGML. That can be in the history section. SGML is history - in the present there is only HTML serializations and XML. Few people think of HTML as being an SGML vocabulary. This opinion is more of a hypothesis, not fully tested, but I do swim in the current of programmers and content authors and I mention it here with all due respect. Jim -----Original Message----- From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@i...] Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 9:55 AM To: Tim Bray Cc: XML Developers List Subject: Re: Wikipedia on XML The very first sentence now seems wrong: XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages XML is most definitely *not* a specification. It is a document format? defined by a specification, but the specification is not XML. However I'm not sure what to say it *is*. A language? A grammar? A document format? Perhaps we should just follow the XML spec spec: "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document." Thus the first couple of paragraphs should be something like this: XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a subset of SGML that is described in a W3C Recommendation and used to create custom markup languages. Markup languages that adhere to the lexical grammar and parsing requirements in the XML specification are called XML applications. Within the constraints of the specification, a markup-language designer has significant freedom in naming and defining markup elements. XML has been used as the basis for a large number of custom-designed languages. Some of these, for example RSS, Atom, SVG, XSLT, and XHTML, have become widely used on the Internet. XML is also widely used as a file format for office-productivity software packages, including Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and Apple's iWork. Many configuration languages are based on XML including Ant, Java Servlets, and ????. It is also commonly used to transfer machine readable data between partners with heterogeneous systems; for instance, Federal Express exchanges XML documents to coordinate shipments with customers. What do folks think? -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@i... _______________________________________________________________________ XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS to support XML implementation and development. To minimize spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@l... subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@l... List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
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