Re: XML for linguists?

And Rosta wrote:

> My impression of HTML was that it was essentially a
> (somewhat crappy) SGML DTD,
Just so.

> and of XML that it is a less crappy DTD.
No, it's a *subset* of SGML, leaving out the evil and rude parts, and allowing
some new things like full Unicode and DTD-less operation.  SGML specification
= 500 pages, XML specification = 35 pages, more or less.

> Is this sort of thing becoming feasible in
> a hassle-free way, at all?
"Not yet, but venissoon after" (Finnegans Wake).  Some competing word
processors are starting to use specific XML DTDs to represent files,
but AFAIK there is still no WP that does any-DTD-you-like combined
with a stylesheet for presentation.

> p.s. When the TEI project was being developed, another group somewhere
> were working on a similar project for multimedia, called HiTime (or
> something like that). What became of that?
It became an ISO standard, but it's unbelievably hairy.  Parts of it
are now resurfacing in the XML community, but the process is slow.

--

John Cowan      http://www.reutershealth.com            jcowan@reutershealth.com
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger Schau
Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)