for
1/27/2001
Editor's Note: Some have charged that the Space Toast News Service will reprint any press release sent to it, verbatim. We would respond that we would never uphold such high journalistic standards, and often go so far as editing said press releases for grammar and punctuation before allowing them to appear on the Space Toast Page.
XML. EXtensible Markup Language? Try EXtreme Markup Language! Let the eons of "Hypertext" Markeup Language (HTML) die with a dying fall, for this is the future of document communication!
You've all seen the tv spot. A dusty batallion of soldiers before a flaming battlefield loads a polished shell into its enormous artillery gun. An incomprehensible shout. An enormous round is blasted high into the sky!
A man sits at his computer, coding. The shell crashes behind him. Fire! Lightening! He codes on, and on, as another round is fired. This one lands closer, but no! He's still typing. He's still coding!
"Fire," shouts the artillery commander again. Fire! Smoke!
Kaboom! The smoke whips away--but no! He's still coding! Still typing. Close-up on the man's scratchy, unshaven face. His bleary, war-weary eyes. A bead of Coke runs down his lip. In heroic slow-motion, he wipes it away, the flames of war and limited HTML "href" linking behind him. He slowly catches our eye.
Metal letters appear. They spell out "XML--have you got what it takes?" Well have you?
What is XML? What do you mean what is XML?! XML is your future, and mine. According to Peter Flynn of XML.com...
"...XML is designed to make it easy and straightforward to use SGML on the Web! Easy to define document types! Easy to author and manage SGML-defined documents, and easy to transmit and share them across the Web... punk!"
Adds Norman Walsh, in his brooding, Napleonic drawl: "XML is defined as an application profile of SGML. SGML is the Standard Generalized Markup Language defined by ISO 8879. SGML has been the standard, vendor-independent way to maintain repositories of structured documentation for more than a decade..." His anger/passion reaches a boiling point: "But it is not well suited to serving documents over the web!!!" he bellows, savagely deleting Linux from all of the machines on the network and methodically overturning a conference table.
Like its football cousin, the eXtreme Football League...
...XML intends to bring some "eXtreme" to the web. How? With "an eXtremely simple dialect of SGML which is completely described in the XML Specification! The goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML!" So says Flynn, and so says [your newspaper]!
In conclusion: XML--have you got what it takes?
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