Subject: SGML/XML

From: Thilo Pfennig <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 23:00:21 +0200 (MEST)

On 20-May-99 Kelley wrote:

> Okay, techies, I don't think it's just me missing a bit of this conversation.
> What is XML?  SGML?  T-1?  etc??
> 
> Kelley

Ok, I give some Info about the "ML´s" ML means "Markup Language". The Language
of the WWW is HT-ML (Hypertext-ML) and is a subset of SGML, as well as XML.
HTML had its limitations, pure SGML was to complicated to be widely
distributed. But it layed the ground for the new coming webstandard XML. That
is also a good format for exchanging documents.

What does this mean: You do not need any expensive software like Microsoft
Office to read or produce documents that anyone can read. "Documents" may
include all kinds of media (like pictures, movies, films).

The "magic" about this SGML is, that you only need one source-document for many
different output-formats. With SGML/XML you can build databases, too. There are
absolutely no limitations. The only limitation that yet the whole thing has not
reached its fullness.

SGML enables us to give a given document more intelligence in describing (via
markup) what a paragraph or picture means. And that enables software to make
more out of a documents as just printing it. For instance you could produce a
summary out of thousand different documents that all have something in common.
You would not have to read all of the documents. So it will lead to the point
where we can read, what we need, and not hundreds of uninteresting pages. If
accessible via the internet, we could do this in seconds.

So: More freedom, less costs, more possibilities of usage . Somehow it would
mean to have one seed, from which you can get many different plants allover the
world in seconds. It also means more ease of translating documents, so we might
see the end of Babylon soon.

Excuse me, but I do not see myself as a "techie". It´s just not
permaculture-technic but computer-technic, that can be used for permaculture,
too.

ciao,

Thilo

-- 
Thilo Pfennig 
<http://Alternativ.Net/>

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