Robert McHenry, Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia Britannica, gave a speech entitled Copernicus. It was not a talk about Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer, but rather a talk about social and technological change.
McHenry gave a brief orientation to the events leading up to Copernicus' theory about the planets and sun not revolving around the earth, but rather about the earth revolving, with the other planets, around the sun.
McHenry then moved on to give an interesting background to the changes within Encyclopaedia Britannica as they moved from simply paper publishing to publishing on CD and on the Web. Throughout, he drew parallels to Copernicus. Changing their publishing process was a fundamental shift, comparable within EB to the shift in astronomy posited by Copernicus. But perhaps more interesting was the shifting of what was once the center of the universe (the paper publication) to a position as one orbiting planet around the sun (the information making up the EB).
With the advent of the web, the information boundaries now shift quickly. EB maintains many links to information that augments EB-developed material (e.g., such as current census information). These links are now part of that 'sun' and must be constantly evaluated and maintained. McHenry's main message was that content, its context, and its management was crucial and that SGML/XML made it all possible.
The conference concluded with Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb, Inventor of SGML, Information Management Strategies speaking on SGML, XML, HTML -- sorting it all out.
Goldfarb pointed out that there are no real differences between SGML and XML, that the differences are more marketing oriented. The technical differences between the two do not change the major concepts of both:
When selling SGML or XML, we need to convince the prospect that: there's a need for better information handling; the SGML/XML approach can do the job; and why it is better than other choices (HTML, PDF, RTF, DBMS with generated HTML, etc.).
Goldfarb also clarified terminology for defining HTML and XML. HTML uses the standard syntax with a fixed vocabulary and so it is an application of SGML. XML uses a simplified syntax with a user-defined vocabulary, and therefore it is a profile of SGML.
He urges that we only ever compare HTML with 'full SGML'. This establishes that HTML is SGML, but that something is missing.
Goldfarb also talked about the concept of thoughts versus the rendition of thoughts. Thoughts have not been able to travel without renditions in the past. Renditions have style; they don't present the thought neutrally. SGML and XML are appropriate for many uses because they can be used to speak the application's language - any vocabulary, any style (because style information is separate from underlying content). Thus now, with SGML, thoughts can travel without renditions. We can preserve thoughts without solidifying them with renditions and then trying to distill out the thoughts again at the receiving end. People are so used to creating thoughts and style together that it is hard for users to understand how to stop at step one (just thought creation).
As for XML, Goldfarb quoted G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799), the German physicist and philosopher: "Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age." Because we are so used to having thoughts with renditions, in fact because attaching renditions to thoughts is natural to us, the absence of rendition may feel unnatural. So, Goldfarb closed by saying that SGML is an unnatural act and XML is also an unnatural act -- but much easier to perform!
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