Chapter 2. Markup and CoreConcepts
This is probably the most important chapter in the book, as it describes the fundamental building blocks of all XML-derived languages: elements, attributes, entities, and processing instructions. It explains what a document is, and what it means to say it is well-formed or valid. Mastering these concepts is a prerequisite to understanding the many technologies, applications, and software related to XML.
How do we know so much about the syntactical details of XML? It's all described in a technical document maintained by the W3C, the XML recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006). It's not light reading, and most users of XML won't need it, but you many be curious to know where this is coming from. For those interested in the standards process and what all the jargon means, take a look at Tim Bray's interactive, annotated version of the recommendation at http://www.xml.com/axml/testaxml.htm.
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