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Will "Older" Markup Languages be Replaced by XML?

Each markup language, such as HTML/XHTML, SGML, and XML, will continue to be used for its own strengths. One will not replace the other.

HTML/XHTML will remain the simplest way to publish data quickly on the Web, mostly for display and short-term data. It will remain as a way to provide backward compatibilty for older browsers, computers and operating systems.

What about SGML?

SGML, (Standard Generalized Markup Language) the parent of XML and HTML, is an international standard that has been in use as a markup language primarily for technical documentation and government applications. It was developed to standardize the production process for large document sets. For example, medical records, the IRS, Department of Defense, large company databases, aircraft parts and library catalogs.

Marking-up documents in SGML allows information to be passed from one system to the next without losing information. SGML allowed a developer to create a common set of markup instructions to be understood by all text processing applications because the markup was just text and unencumbered by any formatting code. Once a section of text was identified, than any application could be provided with a separate set of instructions on how to process that section.

The structural basis of SGML is the division of information in a document into useful sections such as the title, paragrahs, part numbers, person nmaes, text, graphics, hypertext links, etc.

SGML systems are better suited for large complex data/document environments that justify the development expense and the installation and administration of the systems needed for the development or processing of a large amount of these documents or data.

XML was designed to deliver structured content over the internet, not to completely replace SGML. It reduces the options available in SGML to those most applicable to the web and allows the development of user-defined document types.

What about HTML/XHTML?

HTML/XHTML describes the formatting and structures the layout of a web document. The predefined tag set and those tag extensions unique to a specific browser vendor does not allow a developer to uniquely describe a document.

A drawback of HTML/XHTML based web pages is that information and data cannot be easily manipulated or even copied. Have you ever tried to copy a table from a web page into a spreadsheet?

XML is not a replacement for HTML/XHTML. XML is a compliment to HTML/XHTML. In the future development of the Web it is most likely that XML will be used to structure and describe Web data, while HTML/XHTML will be used to format and display the same data through the use of elements, CSS and/or XSL/XSLT. Future browser versions will play a key role in allowing XML and all its parts to play a more dominant role on the internet.

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