Re: Recognizing the contribution of the developers of XML

• From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: peter murray-rust <pm286@xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:07:40 +1000

peter murray-rust wrote:
> Remember also that XML was a direct descendant of SGML. SGML was 
> typical first version system - over-ambitious and (I believe) never 
> fully implemented in a single piece of software. 
There are two optional features in SGML that were not implemented by the 
dominant parsers
(OmniMark, SP, SGMLS) which were DATATAG and CONCUR. IIRC there were
private systems that used them however. (E.g. TEI has CONCUR YES.)

To say that SGML was never fully implemented assumes that the spec was 
written with that
assumption. On the contrary, the provision of optional features with 
clear conformance levels
shows otherwise. That James Clark or Sam Willmott or whoever decided not 
to implement
a certain optional part of SGML shows it is good to have optional parts 
not enormous monolithic standards. So I am not aware of any part of ISO 
8879 that was not implemented somewhere.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe