XML: A Brief History

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With the explosion the Web and the massive amount of HTML development that consequently began to be undertaken, people began running into HTMLs many shortcomings very quickly. At the same time, SGML proponents, who'd been working in relative obscurity for many years , began looking for a way to use SGML itself on the Web, instead of just one application of it (HTML). They realized that SGML itself was too complex for the task. Most people couldn't or wouldn't use it, so they needed an alternative. Again, what they were looking for was something that blended the best aspects of HTML and SGML.

In mid-1996, Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems approached the W3C about forming a committee on using SGML on the Web. The effort was given the green light by the W3C's Dan Connolly and, although organized, led, and underwritten by Sun Microsystems, the actual work was shared among Bosak and people from outside Sun Microsystems, including Tim Bray, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, and Jean Paoli of Microsoft. By November of 1996, the committee had the beginnings of a simplified form of SGML that was no more difficult to learn and use than HTML, but that retained many of the best features of SGML. This was the birth of XML as we know it.

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