ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34                                                   

Document Description and Processing Languages                         





ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 N 105                



DATE:  1999-11-11     



REPLACES                                     



DOC TYPE:

National Body Contribution                                            



TITLE:

U.S. Contribution on JTC 1 Resolution 20 (SC 34 N 105), Japanese      

Contribution Concerning Referencing to XML                            



SOURCE:

U.S. National Body                                                    



PROJECT:                   



STATUS:

For review and discussion under Agenda Item 10 at the 29 November - 3 

December 1999 JTC 1/SC 34 Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, USA.           



ACTION ID:  ACT 



DUE DATE:            



DISTRIBUTION:  P and L Members                                             

               SC Chairman                                                 

               WG Conveners and Secretariats                               





MEDIUM:  E



DISKETTE NO.:            



NO. OF PAGES:  3         





ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, American National Standards Institute, 11 West   

42nd Street, New York, NY  10036, Tel:  +1 212 642 4976, Fax:  +1 212 

840 2298, Email:  mpeacock@ansi.org

 

 

US National Body Contribution on JTC 1 N 5917 - Japanese Contribution

Concerning Referencing to XML

 

The U.S. interprets the Japanese contribution as raising two issues:

1. Should ISO 8879 be revised to make it better known that XML is a subset of ISO 8879 SGML?

2. Should ISO 8879 be revised so that XML can be cited in other ISO documents?

 

We address these issues as follows:

1. Should ISO 8879 be revised to make it better known that XML is a subset of ISO 8879 SGML?

 

XML is a subset of ISO 8879 SGML. This fact is recognized by the W3C and well-known to the world, and is evidenced by the Abstract of the XML Recommendation, reproduced here in its entirety:

"The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML."

Furthermore, the Introduction to the XML Recommendation begins:

"Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML documents are conforming SGML documents."

Because the XML Recommendation is freely available on the World Wide Web, orders of magnitude more people will see it than will see ISO 8879.

We therefore see no need to make any changes in the text of ISO 8879 in order to acknowledge its relationship to XML. A base standard such as ISO 8879 cannot be expected to be aware of all the applications and derivations that can be made of it. It is up to the derived standards to indicate their relationship to the base standard, which the W3C has done with XML. Anyone who reads the first sentence of the XML Recommendation will know that XML is a subset of SGML.

2. Should ISO 8879 be revised so that XML can be cited in other ISO documents?

 

XML is a W3C standard and can be cited in the same way as other industry standards are cited in ISO documents. Simply mentioning in ISO 8879 that XML is a subset will not change the ability to reference XML in other ISO standards. However, a revision of ISO 8879 is currently in development that could, if desired, identify the XML subset. That would give the XML subset an official ISO status for referencing.