Abstract
Misunderstandings about the goals and strengths of different document and data interchange formats can lead to suboptimal decisions. Such misunderstandings appear widespread. The purpose of this paper is to suggest areas in which each format has strengths, and to provide clear explanations that people can use to place XML in the context of other current markup systems.
Common misconceptions about XML include statements such as “XML was designed for Web services and therefore unsuitable for documents;” “XML was designed to replace HTML and has failed;” “XML cannot transmit semantics of any kind;” “XML is dead.” In fact, XML is alive and well. There are misconceptions about other formats, too, of course.
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