BKW3JI24.RVW   971210

"World Wide Web Journal: XML: Principles, Tools, and Techniques", Dan
Connolly, 1997, 1-56592-349-9, U$29.95/C$42.95
%E   Dan Connolly
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   1997
%G   1-56592-349-9
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$29.95/C$42.95 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%P   266 p.
%S   World Wide Web Journal
%T   "World Wide Web Journal: XML: Principles, Tools, and Techniques"

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is often, and incorrectly, said to be
a subset of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).  HTML, in
fact, is the best known *application* written in SGML, even for those
who don't know what SGML, or an SGML application, are.  SGML is rather
difficult to work with: not necessarily conceptually complex, and
certainly no harder to use than a tool of similar flexibility, but
definitely time consuming.  HTML, on the other hand, even in its most
esoteric and Internet-Explorer-specific extensions, is pretty simple. 
What HTML is not, is flexible.  It is a standard set of commands for
the display of information over the net, lately being used and misused
for other tasks as well.

(With greater numbers of people using Web browsers as mail agents and
news readers, HTML is starting to be used for formatted mail.  We
dinosaurs who still keep separate clients for separate applications
get a bit irked at this practice.  I understand that one regular
Usenet poster puts all his postings inside HTML comment tags, so that
them young whipper-snappers can't read 'em.  But I digress.)

Hence XML, the eXtensible Markup Language.  XML *is* a subset of SGML,
and steers a middle course between the limitations of HTML, and the
demands of SGML.  XML allows for the creation of new extensions to
HTML, within the confines of standard Web documents.  This edition of
the World Wide Web Journal deals primarily with XML, although there
are also reports on MathML, and the Document Object Model (DOM).

This edition has a greater than average number of technical papers,
all dealing with some aspect of XML.  As well as general overviews,
these essays touch on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the pitfalls of
embedded markup, chemical information, medical documents, Perl, the
new Lark language, parsers, browsers, and the future.

As always, the World Wide Web Journal is at the cutting edge.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997   BKW3JI24.RVW   971210