[austechwriter] Re: DITA versus DocBook
- From: Mike Buckler <mbuckler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 19:02:33 +0800
Monday, August 11, 2003, 5:07:40 PM, Stuart wrote:
SB> Think of SGML like Papa Bear's chair: too big and hard for most
SB> people. HTML is Baby Bear's chair: too small and restrictive.
SB> XML is (meant to be) like Mama Bear's chair: just right.
Well, not exactly.
From an authoring point of view it makes very little difference wether
you are using an XML or SGML application. If you are using a WYSIWYG
environment like FrameMaker or Arbortext, it makes no difference at all.
The designers of XML had a different motivation from the designers of
SGML. They were looking at a replacement for the confusing array of
data formats used by business to business electronic data interchange
(EDI) formats. SGML looked good, but required complex (and therefore
expensive) software parsers. By creating XML as a subset of SGML the
parsers became easier to write and and therefore cheaper.
This perhaps explains some of the hype surrounding XML. It makes it
cheaper for businesses to conduct business to business data transfer. The
hype surrounding authoring conventional documents in XML format is
a side effect. People have been able to write SGML documents
for many years and the end result is essentially the same.
See the following newsgroups:
comp.text.sgml - mostly about document authoring.
comp.text.xml - mostly about programming with a gradual shift to
document authoring.
Best regards,
Mike Buckler
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