XML or SGML? (Was: DOCBOOK: Glossary database

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at pasteur dot fr>]

On Friday 28 January 2000, at 15 h 3, the keyboard of Jorge Godoy 
<godoy@conectiva.com.br> wrote:

> > If you're writing in XML, I'd be tempted to make an external
> > tool that read your source document and your glossary database
...
> I've read some articles comparing SGML and XML, but I always thought
> that SGML was better than XML. 

XML is a subset of SGML. Now, you can think that "bigger is better" and you'll 
love SGML or that "smaller is easier and faster" and you'll prefer XML.

See the size of libraries: 'sp' is for SGML:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      2014208 Nov  2 17:27 /usr/lib/libsp.so.1.0.3

And the expat libraries for XML:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        79412 Jun  2  1999 
/usr/lib/libxmltok.so.1.1
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        29120 Jun  2  1999 
/usr/lib/libxmlparse.so.1.1

[Personal: I write DocBook in XML only. I think, like Norman Walsh said, that 
it is much easier to program quick-and-dirty applications for XML files.]