[tei-council] SGML or not to SGML, that is the question

Christian Wittern wittern at kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Thu Sep 14 22:31:44 EDT 2006


Syd Bauman <Syd_Bauman at Brown.edu> writes:

> So, it seems Sebastian and I have found that at least we two agree on
> 2 things:
>
> * TEI Council has never formally said one way or the other whether P5
>   will support SGML or not;
>
> * we think P5 should not support SGML.
>
> Should I just take it as a fait accompli that we are no longer
> supporting SGML? Does anyone plan to argue in favor of continuing to
> support SGML? Do we need a formal vote? Mr. Chairman?

De facto we are already far away from SGML, although you might still
trick some processors into working with the files.  Things like
namespaces do not exist in SGML and you have to cheat to get them
working, but they will break apart at the next crossing.  Same is for
things like datatypes, values for xml:lang etc.  

It would seem silly and outright wrong to me to claim any kind of SGML
support for P5 and I think this is due to technical reasons and does
not really need a vote (But I could be convinced otherwise).

All the best, Christian


-- 

 Christian Wittern 
 Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
 47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN



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