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As discussed last time, the Chemical Markup Language, or CML,
holds the promise of helping to unify the formats that
chemists use to categorize and share the vast quantities of
chemical data that is available to, or even produced by,
them. In order to make such unification even possible, CML
had to be based on technology which is powerful, elegant, and
dynamic in nature. To meet these necessities, CML is built
on the shoulders of XML, the Extensible Markup Language.
While HTML is very important in the world today, it does have its limitations, which can be seen by taking a quick look at how it does what it does. Basically, an HTML file is a holder for information that the author wants to convey over the web. Within this holder are various constructs that tell the web browser how to format what the reader ultimately sees. These constructs are called "tags", and the set of HTML tags allows for control of font size, indentation, table creation, background color, inclusion of images, etc. Obviously, there have been some very creative and useful web pages developed using these basics, but there are pitfalls. For one, every web author in the world that uses HTML is stuck with the same set of HTML tags. That is, there is no flexibility in what specific actions can be accomplished. The solution to this has been that the HTML definition is updated every so often to include new functionalities. This is all well and good, and it even addresses some important tasks, but it also creates other problems. In particular, the number of tags and attributes has grown considerably, and if HTML has any hopes of keeping up with current trends, exponential growth is probably required. This situation creates an obvious burden on the author to learn and retain all the tags that might be useful to him in organizing his documents. Enter XML. In order to overcome the problems discussed above, XML predefines no set of tags that everyone must live with. Rather, XML allows the author to define all the tags he needs and then use them in his XML documents. For instance, a bookstore owner might define individual tags for books, Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article ... And XML Begat CML ... in Scientific Computing is owned by . Permission to republish ... And XML Begat CML ... in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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