Re: DOCBOOK: Re: DocBook 4.0 - SGML or XML?

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:
| 
| > XML V1.0 is SGML. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that XML
| > V1.0+delta will also be SGML.
| 
| I'd would be hard (and stupid) to break SGML conformance at the document
| level.

Stupid, perhaps, but it's not at all difficult. Schema-valid documents
that don't have a DTD will be XML in every meaningful sense that
today's DTD-valid XML documents are. But they won't be SGML in equally
meaningful senses.

And by the time you've decorated an XML document with namespace
declarations, xml:base attributes, XPointers and XLinks, and
xml:include elements, there are so many XML-specific semantics layered
on top of the basic element structure that the connection to SGML is
already hard to see.

I'm not arguing that this is good thing, necessarily, but it's a thing
whether we like it or not.

| > In fact, schema languages other than DTD syntax already break SGML
| > compatibility at some level, at least conceptually.
| 
| AFAIK, "Schemata" will add additional contraints -- people who really
| need contraints might be better served with an SQL system (IMO) or check
| them on the application level.

Nonsense. The same arguments could be applied to DTDs, but surely you're
not suggesting that a common mechanism for expressing important constraints
should be tossed out and replaced with specific applications?

| "schema languages" sic -- no standard thus far, more than one offering.

Simple matter of time.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Nothing will ever be attempted, if
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | all possible objections must be
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | first overcome.--Dr. Johnson