XML & HTML

XML and HTML.........

As discussed previously, XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is whereas HTML is more concerned with the display of data and how data looks.

The big difference between HTML and XML is that HMTL has evolved into a markup language that describes the look, feel and action of a Web page. In contrast, XML doesn't describe how a page looks, how it acts or what it does. XML describes what the words in a document are. This is a critical distinction! While HTML combines structure and display, XML separates them. This means that XML documents are more portable and can be used in many different types of applications.

XML specifies neither semantics nor a tag set. In fact XML is really a meta-language for describing markup languages. In other words, XML provides a facility to define tags and the structural relationships between them. Since there's no predefined tag set, there can't be any preconceived semantics.

In the near future, we'll see both XML and HTML documents. Eventually, XML will probably replace HTML, or HTML will become an application of XML

XML and HTML were both designed with different goals in mind. XML is not a replacement for HTML in fact it complements HTML. In the future we will probably see XML and HTML being used together where XML will describe the data and HTML will display the same.