Re: Editing conventions [sgml, XML ! ]

[Dorothy Day day@xxxxxxxx]

On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Daniel Say wrote:

> 	and SGML is soon to be replaced by XML.
>
> 	Will XY5=Smartwords automatically convert to and fro
> 	to XML?
>
>

While XML may supplant HTML among more sophisticated webpage developers,
it cannot replace SGML, which is the metastructure, the general rule set
for *how* you lay out your document type definition (DTD). SGML is the
"popular" name for the international standard ISO 8879.

It's the DTDs that are used to describe the markup system employed in a
document. The DTD currently used on the Web is HTML (3.2, in most
cases), but there are many others in use for other kinds of documents,
throughout the publishing and documentation industries. (Massive DoD and
other govt tomes were the original impetus to develop a SGML, long
before the web was a glimmer in Tim Berners-Lee's eye.) A good place to
get an idea of its commercial impact is

	http://www.cyberdynamic.com/htmfiles/arbor7.html

--and that doesn't even mention the Text Encoding Initiative's efforts
to develop DTDs for all kinds of scholarly literature (which you can see
at
	http://cethmac.princeton.edu/TEI2dtd/DTD-HOME.html

if you're curious).


XML is just the new kid on the block.


---
Dorothy Day			
School of Library and Information Science
Indiana University
day@xxxxxxxx