[Wikipedia-l] Re: <span>

[Tim Starling]

Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Unfortunately, the WP suffers by the re-inventing wheels syndrom
> (instead of switching to XML/SGML now).
> 

Unfortunately one type of wheel doesn't fit every car. XML is designed 
to be primarily machine-readable and unambiguous, human-readability and 
ease of authorship is a secondary consideration. I once read an article 
by Tim Berners-Lee (?), saying among other things that users ultimately 
should not see XML except in exceptional circumstances, and that 
automated tools will be created to author it.

Wiki markup, on the other hand, is primarily designed to be easy to 
create and easy to read. Concerns such as the ease of parser design and 
avoiding ambiguity are decidedly secondary.

-- Tim Starling