Re: XML

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

KoReE said:
> Okay, I've seen a bunch of mentions of how the Mozilla source now supports
> XML parsing.  I've looked all over the web, but have yet to find out what
> the heck XML is!!  I know it's probably "X Markup Language", but I don't
> know what the X is :D  Anyone know the specifics of this?

X == Extensible

The best reference is probably the W3C's page on XML:

    http://www.w3.org/XML/

Essentially, XML is intended to be the successor to HTML.  While HTML
has been gradually moving away from its SGML roots (I don't think
there's a SGML parser that will parse HTML anymore), focusing on page
layout rather than content presentation, XML is intended to be a true
subset of SGML, with a focus on content rather than presentation.  The
"extensible" part refers to the ability to add arbitrary XML tags,
allowing customized presentation of information.  (The example I keep
hearing is how a bookseller could have tags like <author> and <price>.)

I don't quite follow all the details, mostly because I haven't really
been paying attention until recently, but what I do understand sounds
pretty cool.  With Mozilla now having *the* XML parser (written by the
head technical guy in the W3C's XML committee), I think you'll start
seeing a lot more movement towards XML, RDF, CSS, and all the other
interesting stuff people have been coming up with lately.

BTW, there was a story on news.com the other day about (I think) the
Web.Builder conference, where Marc Andreesen gave a keynote speech.
They have the whole thing (37 minutes) available by Real Audio.  It's
worth listening to.

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
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Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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