Re: Misunderstanding XML
"Chris Knight" wrote...
But an XML tool doesn't work like that, nor is its supposed to. It does not
suppress the XML tags, nor does it do much of anything to the presentation
of what comes between the tags. That's not the idea of an XML tool.
An XML tool is an application that primarily does two things (1) makes the
tags easy to distinguish from the content, usually by giving them a
different color or indentation from the content, and (2) makes it easy to
insert tags with a few clicks, so that they don't have to be manually typed.
It may or may not also include other features, such as the ability to verify
that a document conforms to the XML language it is intended to use.
(Remember XML is a family of languages.)
Very true, but the tools that the comments were speaking about were those that provided formatting and viewing of the structure of an XML file.
The crux of XML is that it is structured. The structure in a particular instance, governed by a specific DTD or schema is always the same if it is valid. There are not many tools that provide a complete suite to address all of those concerns.
There are some, like Extensibility that do provide those tools. There are some, like FrameMaker + SGML that have always provided the capability to produce XML in well-formed and valid format.
There are some, like Microsoft Word, that trumpet XML as a capability, but do not explain what they mean. And, considering how many people use Word, I suspect that any XML output from their efforts would not be, or even intended to be valid. It would be well-formed, but that simply meets the criteria for HTML.
XML is not understood by a large population of technical writers, managers, and others. XML is a buzz word to most.
XML has one major draw back at this point, and that is the delivery system. Until that is taken care of we are at the same point we were at in 1994 when I first got on the internet. There wasn't a lot of HTML pages out there, most of the sites were accessed through telnet, FTP, gopher, etc.
Scott
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References:
Misunderstanding XML: From: Rick Kirkham
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