RE: nwalsh and XML vs SGML [Fwd: First Open Source Documentation Summit at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention]

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan York [mailto:dyork@linuxcare.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 7:39 AM
> To: ldp-discuss
> Subject: nwalsh and XML vs SGML [Fwd: First Open Source Documentation
> Summit at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention]
> 
> After reading the article:
> 
> > http://www.oreilly.com/frank/oscon_summit.html
> 
> I'm just curious about Norman Walsh's comments.  It sounds 
> like basically
> everyone
> was supporting the use of DocBook for the underlying storage 
> format... but then
> it
> sounds like Norman Walsh was suggesting that XML (I assume 
> using the DocBook
> version)
> should be used instead of SGML.  Is this in fact what he was 
> saying?  And what
> was
> the reception to his comments?

>From listening to a lot of the lists that Norm runs, he was definitely
advocating DocBook XML.  SGML is wonderful, but it didn't have the same
allure and hype that was given to XML, and thus didn't get the kind of open
sores development that XML is getting.  

> Was he suggesting it just to get out of all the tags in 
> DocBook?  It doesn't
> seem to
> me that using XML really solves any issues. If anything, the rigid
> case-sensitivity
> (all tags must be lowercase) just seems to add another issue.

What do you mean "just to get out of all the tags in DocBook"?  DocBook is a
Document Type Definition (DTD), which means that it defines a set of
elements, or tags, that get used when doing markup on a document.  DocBook
is still DocBook, whether you're using SGML or XML, you still use the same
elements, although some of the rules are little different.  I'm not sure if
that answers your questions.
	Grego


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