[DOC-SIG] What I don't like about SGML

[Fredrik Lundh]

> So my claim remains that the requirement of SGML conformance is for
> 99% just a nuisance for parser writers.

Isn't this the reason they've developed XML?  To come up with
a small and simple subset, so that anyone writing an application
can get things right?  (Not that they need to, really.  It seems as
if all major environments will include built-in parsers before long.
And if you need your own, there's plenty of free implementations
to chose from...)

> Of course I'm biased, since I'm a parser writer myself...  So see for
> yourself what you think of this argument.

FWIW, I've had similar experiences with scripting languages...

I started using scripting languages to glue things together in the
early eighties, and developed about a dozen languages of various
flavours. They all had serious limitations, mainly because there
was a lot of stuff that would have taken a lot of effort to get right,
or would have turned out way too slow (you cannot look names all
the time, can you?), or bloated. Finally, I've stumbled upon Python,
and realized that now I never had to write another scriping language,
since someone else had already created something powerful enough
for all my needs, and provided a great implementation for free...

And by some odd reason, I've just experienced the same thing with
text markup languages...  Instead of spending more time on edroff
and all the other pod-like stuff I've invented through the years, I
decided to throw them all out and go for SGML/XML, since someone
else had already created something powerful enough for all my needs,
and provided a great implementation for free... (www.jclark.com)

Cheers /F

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