Advantages of SGML
- provided the capability to encode the full structure and intellectual content of documents in a non-propriety software environment
- its inherently hierarchical approach to data structure mirrored the information hierarchies that have long been fundamental to archival description
- not only did SGML capture the full meaning of its structure and content, but in addition it enabled sophisticated retrieval, display, and navigational techniques
- Very different from HTML which is a "procedural" markup.
HTML only provides the capability to encode visual representation characteristics such as font size, bolding, italics, line breaks, etc.
- In essence, SGML was a parent language -- the tag-set building rules -- for HTML and for most other descriptive tag-sets.
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