Re: Difference 'twixt XHTML and XML?

by Christopher Higgs <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>

Date:	Tue, 02 May 2000 11:17:16 +1000
To:	ben(at)mudmail.co.uk, hwg-basics(at)hwg.org
In-Reply-To:	pc
	todo: View Thread, Original

G'Day Ben,

At 22:42 1/05/00 +0100, Ben Bradley UK wrote:
>Just what is the difference between them?
>I had been hearing how XML and XSL were going to revolutionise web design.
>All of a sudden, everyone is talking about XHTML.

I'll give it a try!

SGML = Standardised Generalised Markup Language.  A set of rules for 
creating text-based markup languages, quite complex.

XML = a simplified subset of SGML which is more user-friendly

HTML = an application of SGML

XHTML = HTML rewritten using the limited XML subset.

It means complying with a few extra rules like closing all tags, etc.  If 
you thought Netscape was fussy, XHTML requirements are just as fussy, if 
not worse.

The advantage is that HTML is a stand-alone application whereas XML 
technologies can all talk to each other.  It also means being able to be 
interpreted by browser devices that don't have an inbuilt knowledge of HTML.

At 18:50 1/05/00 -0400, Chuck wrote:
 >Converting is fairly easy, though somewhat laborious.

Conversion isn't as laborious if you make use of HTML-Tidy and HTML-Kit 
from the W3C.

Chris Higgs <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>
Institute of Land and Food Resources
University of Melbourne http://www.landfood.unimelb.edu.au

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