XML 1.1 Bible
Chapter One
An Eagle's Eye
View of XML
This chapter introduces you to XML, the Extensible
Markup Language. It explains, in general terms, what
XML is and how it is used. It shows you how different XML
technologies work together, and how to create an XML document
and deliver it to readers.
What Is XML?
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language (often miscapitalized
as eXtensible Markup Language to justify the acronym).
XML is a set of rules for defining semantic tags that break a
document into parts and identify the different parts of the document.
It is a meta-markup language that defines a syntax in
which other domain-specific markup languages can be written.
XML is a meta-markup language
The first thing you need to understand about XML is that it
isn't just another markup language like HTML, TeX, or troff.
These languages define a fixed set of tags that describe a fixed
number of elements. If the markup language you use doesn't
contain the tag you need, you're out of luck. You can wait
for the next version of the markup language, hoping that it
includes the tag you need; but then you're really at the mercy
of whatever the vendor chooses to include.
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