When reading about XML, remember that XML is not a replacement for HTML XHTML *is* a replacement for HTML.
Yes - XHTML is, but XML isn't. The reason I said this was that a lot of people think that they should go off and rewrite their HTML pages in XML ... but of course if they do anything - you are correct - they should move to XHTML (eventually) as the 'next' version of 'HTML' after v4.
If everyone standardized on XHTML as a format for storing data then the World (Wide Web) would be a wonderful place.
Hang on though - XHTML is just one application of XML. The reasons XML came along were because HTML defines a single document, with no structure - it defines headings, paragraphs, etc - but nothing about chapters or sections ... SGML was about structure, but is too bulky for simple parsers to be written. XML describes structure - see DocBook for an example of an XML application that is geared up to writing structured documentation. It is easy to convert to XML and forget about the structured formatting .. in fact converting to XHTML is just that. There is nothing wrong with this, but you are missing out on one of the core benefits of XML (see next comment).
Adopting well-formed XHTML for displaying our documents might well be a good first stage before we all go over to storing documents as badly-formed XML.
XML is about much more than just presenting information. It is about structure. Ok - you can see a nice document in XHTML ... but this is just one output - what about WAP phones? PDAs ? If you are using DocBook (say) or some other XML source, the idea is that you process it, using a stylesheet to produce an appropriate format: Browser reads it -> XML Source + Stylesheet => XHTML output WAP Phone reads it -> XML Source + different stylesheet => WML output Something else -> etc. Also, a search engine or indexing system could process the same XML source, and because it can derive some context about the structure, can extract the relavent bits of the information it needs: Indexer -> XML Source + another stylesheet => XHTML heading list (say) etc. This is why I say XML is about structure - and this is the thing that gets people interested. If you use one of these news ticker applications (eg bbc or slashdot, etc) then chances are you are using XML. News headlines are exchanged using RSS (an XML application) - you ticker/browser etc will apply a stylesheet (effectively) and format this information into a form that you can then read. Point IE5 at http://slashdot.net/slashdot.rdf for an example.
I suspect that most organizations will miss the point about XML, yet another (probably doomed) attempt to separate MEANING from APPEARANCE.
Maybe - but strict XHTML forces this anyway - you should use XHTML and CSS.
No one cares.
I care :-)
One of the reasons everybody likes Word is that it's very easy to put your memo in 15 different fonts with bold and italic headings.
Fine. Thats up to them - but if they want to publish it on-line ... well again, they can fight with 'save as HTML' ... :-) Kevin.