Entry

What is the difference between XML and HTML?

Nov 21st, 2000 06:39
Michael Claßen,

The HyperText Markup Language is a vocabulary with a fixed set of
elements, used for defining the visual aspects of a text document.
Furthermore, links to images and other documents can be included. This
simple yet powerful concept led to the vast pool of information called
the World-Wide Web (WWW) as we know it today. 
The single biggest weakness of HTML is its lack of extensibility,
for instance in order to display a mathematical formula one had to use a
different tool that produces a GIF image. Not only is this inconvenient,
but all information about the formula, including the fact that it is a
formula, are lost through this forced conversion.
This is where XML with its extensibility comes in. XML was used to
define a standard for mathematical formulas called MathML, and many
others for various subject areas. Some of those will be directly
supported by browsers, others might be converted on the fly to a
lower-level representation rather than manually converted. There is an
XML formulation of HTML called XHTML.
For a hands-on example have a look at
http://webreference.com/xml/column1/