[Erik M. van der Poel]
:
| Note that I'm *not* saying that SGML will never catch on. (I used the
| word "if" very, very carefully.)
SGML has already caught on. It isn't entrenched in the market, yet, but
it's experiencing early exponential growth in both products and users.
(Unless you meant only Internet mail, in which case it's still a very open
question.)
| (By the way, is it possible to write an SGML definition (DTD?) geared
| towards the *...* syntax? Are SGML's syntax rules *that* flexible?)
Yes. The technique is called "short references", which allows certain
character strings to be contextually interpreted as a reference to an
entity, which can best be described as an alternate input source or named
character string object. That is, certain text elements in a document may
provide that "*" shall be interpreted as "<bold>" (via one level of
indirection). Inside the bold element, the "*" is interpreted as
"</bold>", and you have exactly what you're suggesting.
Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum ISO 8879 SGML +47 2295 0313
Oslo, Norway ISO 10744 HyTime
<erik(_at_)naggum(_dot_)no> ISO 9899 C Memento,
terrigena
<SGML(_at_)ifi(_dot_)uio(_dot_)no> ISO 10646 UCS Memento,
vita brevis