Re: XML is boring (was Re: coming clean with the SGML crowd)

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 12:28:36

At 06:28 11/09/98 -0400, Samuel R. Blackburn wrote:
[...]
>
>When asked why I use XML in my programs, I tell folks
>"what HTML is to text, XML is to data." I've found XML to
>be a wonderful solution to exporting data in an easily
>consumable format. I could care less if a browser knows
>how to consume XML.

I share some of this viewpoint, but I'd go further and say that XML is the
only way forward if we wish to *integrate documents and data*. Properly, I
mean. So you could drop a financial report into an XML tool and it would
give you a spread sheet of all the figures and calculate predictions, etc.
[I have more ideas ...].

I have had a volunteer! We need more...

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg