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> HTML5 should have been XML from the start The point is that this hasn't happened; neither back in XML's heyday, and much less today. Now you can bemoan XML's

> HTML5 should have been XML from the start The point is that this hasn't happened; neither back in XML's heyday, and much less today. Now you can bemoan XML's demise until the end of time, or you can fallback to XML's big sister SGML. As I said, SGML has lots of features over XML that are in fact desirable for an authoring format, such as Wiki syntaxes, type-safe/injection-free templating, stylesheets, etc. on top of being able to parse HTML. Many of these features are being reinvented in modern file-based CMSs and static site generators, so there's definitely a use case for this. Whereas editing XML (a delivery rather then authoring format) by hand is quite cumbersome, verbose and redundant, yet still doesn't help at all in how text content is actually created on the web.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Now you can bemoan XML's demise until the end of time XML, while not the main format for modern HTML, isn't dead, so why would one bemoan it's demise? In fact, it's quite widely used.
bhaak 7y ago
Is SGML even still used? The only usecase I remember besides HTML is DocBook and that of course also has a XML variant for a long time. SGML is needlessly complex as an authoring format. Even HTML was considered too complex and that's why we got lightweight markup languages like MarkDown and AsciiDoc. I would be very surprised if we ever turn back to something like SGML. Especially as there are well designed LML as AsciiDoc or reStructuredText.
- incompatible 7y ago
  SGML was in fact designed to be typed by hand, as an evolution of earlier mainframe markup languages at IBM. The idiosyncratic shortcut features are supposed to reduce the number of keystrokes needed for entering text.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  To give you an idea of what SGML is capable of, see my tutorial at [1]. It implements a lightweight content app where markdown syntax is parsed and transformed into HTML via SGML short references, then gets HTML5 sectioning elements inferred (eg. the HTML5 outlining algorithm is implemented in SGML), then gets rendered as a page with a table of content nav-list linking to full body text, and with HTML boilerplate added, all without procedural code. [1]: http://sgmljs.net/docs/producing-html-tutorial/producing-html-tutorial.html http://sgmljs.net/docs/producing-html-tutorial/producing-htm...

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Now you can bemoan XML's demise until the end of time XML, while not the main format for modern HTML, isn't dead, so why would one bemoan it's demise? In fact, it's quite widely used.

bhaak 7y ago

Is SGML even still used? The only usecase I remember besides HTML is DocBook and that of course also has a XML variant for a long time. SGML is needlessly complex as an authoring format. Even HTML was considered too complex and that's why we got lightweight markup languages like MarkDown and AsciiDoc. I would be very surprised if we ever turn back to something like SGML. Especially as there are well designed LML as AsciiDoc or reStructuredText.

incompatible 7y ago
SGML was in fact designed to be typed by hand, as an evolution of earlier mainframe markup languages at IBM. The idiosyncratic shortcut features are supposed to reduce the number of keystrokes needed for entering text.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
To give you an idea of what SGML is capable of, see my tutorial at [1]. It implements a lightweight content app where markdown syntax is parsed and transformed into HTML via SGML short references, then gets HTML5 sectioning elements inferred (eg. the HTML5 outlining algorithm is implemented in SGML), then gets rendered as a page with a table of content nav-list linking to full body text, and with HTML boilerplate added, all without procedural code. [1]: http://sgmljs.net/docs/producing-html-tutorial/producing-html-tutorial.html http://sgmljs.net/docs/producing-html-tutorial/producing-htm...