On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 12:10:19PM -0700, Henry House wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 10:08:21AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > hi all,
> >
> > i'm about to submit something to linuxdoc. they want
> >
> > SGML or XML (DocBook). Or Linuxdoc SGML.
> >
> > for submission. i should know this, but i'm unsure what SGML and XML are.
> > i /think/ they're a generalized html, but other than that, i'm pretty much in
> > the dark.
>
> HTML \subset SGML
Well, no, HTML is an application of SGML, not a subset. Although its
no longer a /strict/ application of SGML in practice, since the DTDs
are never used, and if they were, it'd be even /more/ difficult to get
the same HTML to be processed about the same by all the different
browsers.
> XML \subset SGML
According to the W3C recommendations on XML, you are correct here.
However, I don't believe the W3C standards one bit when they make this
claim, since several XML constructs (notably the DTD) does not conform
with SGML, and so no XML-ignorant SGML processor can process XML,
which ought to be the case if XML were a true subset of SGML.
For others: XML is W3C's attempt at redfining SGML to be more useful
for web use, and they seem to have succeeded pretty well at that. It
places more constraints on the source than SGML, so that processing is
a little more straightforward (although it removes one - DTDs).
Micah
