[Introduction][Goals of XML][XML vs HTML][How to write XML]

SGML, HTML, and XML

SGML which stands for Structured Generalized Markup Language, is the mother of all Markup Languages. Both HTML and XML are both derived from SGML. SGML defines a basic syntax, but allows you to create your own elements. To use SGML to describe a particular document, you must invent an appropriate set of elements and a document structure. For example to define a book you use BOOK, A-Section etc.

A general purpose set of elements used to describe a articular type of document is know as SGML application.

It seems that SGML does everything, however, the XML Working group of W3C have defined that SGML is too complicated to efficiently deliver information on the web.

XML is a simplified version of SGML The XML offers fewer options than SGML thus making it easier for humans to read XML documents and for programmers to write browesers, scripts and Web Pages That access and diplay the document information.

If they do have sense, all future applications will store its data in XML.

The future might give us word processors, spreadsheet applications and databases that can read each others data in a pure text format, without any conversion utilities in between.

We can only pray that Microsoft and all the other software vendors will agree.