[SPAM-25] Re: XML quote Re: Meeting Notes: SLUG Mon 14 Nov - Google Earth and everything else

[Dan Coutu]

Drew Van Zandt wrote:
> Basically it's just HTML with made-up tags instead of standards like
> <b>This is bold</b>.  The advantage is that you can use a standard
> parser rather than inventing a new parser every time, and then just
> look through your already parsed data for particular
> application-dependent key->value pairs.
Sigh, this isn't really true. Both HTML and XML are more like siblings. 
Both are subsets of SGML.
(Standard Generalized Markup Language) SGML was devised many years ago 
to be a way to represent
documentation markup. Sort of a descendant of nroff if you like. The 
team that designed SGML was
senior enough and forward thinking enough to craft a markup language 
that could be used to represent
almost anything. Part of the SGML standard allows for the creation of 
user-defined tags, what Drew
refers to as made-up tags. User defined tags must be defined following a 
set of rules, just like definining
variables in your favorite programming language.

HTML allows for sloppy parsing that doesn't strictly conform to the SGML 
specification. On the other
hand XML adheres strictly to the SGML standard and doesn't allow sloppy 
parsing. Therefore
where HTML allows things like a <br> tag with no closing tag XML 
requires either a matching begin-end
tag pair (such as <p> </p>) or an empty tag (such as <br />) that 
explicitly says 'this tag has no content.'

>
> --DTVZ
>
> On 11/14/06, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>> kclark at elbrysnetworks.com (Kevin D. Clark) writes:
>>
>> > "Bill Ricker" <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> writes:
>> >
>> >>>   "XML is for people who don't understand Scheme."  (not my quote,
>> >>> that just seems like such good flamewar fodder that I had to pass it
>> >>> along)
>> >>
>> >> There's nothing new under the sun. Each generation thinks they
>> >> invented sex and fast square root algorithms.
>> >>
>> >> I've said for years, if LISP stands for Lots of Invidious Silly
>> >> Parentheses,   ><ML has twice as many bent-til-they-snapped brackets
>> >> and usesancient  ENDIF syntax, as if syntax-aware editors couldn't
>> >> handle closing-brace-match.
>> >
>> > I agree with this all 100%.  XML is just another markup language for
>> > me.  Earlier in my career ASN.1 and BER-encoding were my bread and
>> > butter.  Nowadays XML has more popularity (probably deservedly so).
>>
>> Is there anyway we could foster this into a real discussion on XML,
>> what it is, what it's used for, why it's
>> good/bad/evil/sucks-rocks/better-than-sliced-bread ?
>>
>> About the only thing I know about XML is that it appears to be a
>> markup language for Pirate Treasure Maps (you know, X-marks-the-spot...
>> okay, sorry, not funny :)
>>
>> I know it wasn't intended for wetware-parsing, but increasingly hear
>> how many people have trouble dealing with it.  Conversely, I haven't
>> yet heard a single computer say anything bad about it :)
>>
>> -- 
>> Seeya,
>> Paul
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>>
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