> Did you know you can make an XML file that reads your /etc/passwd file when it's parsed? Not only can SGML (but not XML on its own) read /etc/passwd, it can

> Did you know you can make an XML file that reads your /etc/passwd file when it's parsed? Not only can SGML (but not XML on its own) read /etc/passwd, it can format it into fully-tagged markup and then render it into eg an HTML table. Demonstrating what SGML/XML is actually designed for: encoding and authoring semistructured text. This can't be overstated in discussions like these where use cases for config formats, service payload formats, and actual text authoring are all thrown into the same basket when they shouldn't. Btw: you can parse and canonicalize this new config file format into markup using the same SGML mechanism you'd be using for CSVs like /etc/passwd, namely short references Btw2: you can skip/ignore markup declarations in XML, including whole declaration sets (DTDs) since these can be recognized using plain greedy regexpes, though you can't ignore entity declarations when actually used in your XML body text