Posted by Toby Inkster on 05/19/06 10:37

Fred wrote:

> Just about the time I have started to feel comfortable programming in HTML,
> this XML comes along.

Firstly, creating an HTML document is not "programming" any more than
creating a PDF document or a GIF image. Secondly, XML came along more than
eight years ago.

> Would some kind soul pls post the difference between the two and why one
> is better than the other.

Neither is "better" -- it's like comparing apples with oranges.

HTML is a language for marking up documents -- describing their structure.
For example:

<h1>This is a heading.</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph. <em>This is important.</em></p>
<h2>This is a sunheading.</h2>
<img src="this_is_an_image" alt="this is some alternative text">
<!-- and so on -->

XML is not a language for marking up documents -- XML is a framework for
creating *other* markup languages.

For example, using XML, people have created:

* SVG - an image format
* RSS - a format suitable for syndicating news stories
* MathML - a format for describing mathematical symbols and formulae
* SMIL - a format for describing multimedia presentations
* XHTML - a language similar to HTML, but obeying XML rules

So in summary:

* HTML is a language for creating documents
* XML is a technology for creating languages

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Back to original message]