Kendall Grant Clark examines the legacy effects of SGML on XML. "Some significant percentage of the pain suffered by the XML development community over the past 5 years is directly attributable to dealing with the legacy of SGML. It has, in other words, turned out to be much harder, much more complex to do "SGML on the Web" than many people thought it would be. A considerable amount of the early traction seized by XML was due to the confluence of two forces: first, the technical maturity of SGML; second, the early to middle years of exuberance about the Web itself."

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