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

[Fred L. Drake]

Paul Prescod writes:
 > "<" or ">" can only occur inside *in quotes*. This is like complaining
 > that the following Python statement is confusing because of the two

Paul,
  I think Guido is referring to the markup declaration subset:

<!doctype blat "fooplace" [
  <!element ... - o empty>
  ]>

  Material like this is hard to deal with in off-the-cuff parsers such 
as the ones in Grail and sgmllib.  This is more of a problem of cheap
implementation than anything else; standards compliance is rare in
that environment.

 > SGML document type. Please tell me what Grail should do with this
 > document:

  [devious example elided]

  Roll over and play dead.  But not gracefully.  Even I think that the 
"what Grail should do" aspect of this is irrelevant; Grail is
targetted primarily toward the Web that's deployed, and only
secondarily to make my life tolerable.  I really don't expect many
people will use the "strict mode", esp. since only a few things are
improved and pages are shown to be broken.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.
fdrake@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
1895 Preston White Drive
Reston, VA    20191-5434

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