Question for you technologically advanced (i.e., everyone except me ). Exactly WHAT is a "Microsoft XML 4.0 Parser good for, and why does MS download it when I download security patches for Millenium OS? This has happened twice. I delete it, then a few weeks later download more security patches, and that XML 4.0 Parser shows up again. Do they think I'm a genius over there at Redmond?

Er . . . a response to the first question only will be sufficient.

It is a component of the internet browser, the old XML parser had some security issues, so it updates it.

XML is a more or less a newer version of HTML, the language Web pages come to your browser in. The XML or HTML code tells your browser what to display, perhaps (e.g., many images) where on the Web to get it from, and provides formatting guidelines to display it properly ("this is boldface, this is a heading, this is centered, this is red, this table should be 80 percent of the width of your window, this field is a password so mask it...") and so on.

Lots of pages use XML now. If your browser doesn't understand XML it will display them in a limited way (they might look fine but not function fully) or not at all.

A "parser" is a program that breaks language down into its components and figures out how they relate to each other. (Remember parsing sentences in middle school English?) An XML parser is a program that does this for XML. It's an essential part of a browser that is expected to accept XML pages.

So, you pretty much need it. Microsoft wants you to have a current version of it and (bless its heart) is giving it to you free. All goodness here.

HTML is a specific subset of XML. Most HTML is XML.. but Most XML is not HTML.

HTML is a data representation, rendering and presentation language.

XML is a data extension, new vocabulary creation (XML's specific formats: HTML, WML, ebXML,EDI-XML, HR-XML) and data storage language.

Most browsers can not read XML and present them as it is.

Thanks, all of you. The explanations were lucid, and I understood them. (A tribute to your ability to explain, not to mine to understand.)

But that XML icon just sits on my desktop, complete with menu options File/ Edit / View / Go/ Help. It seems to be waiting for me to do something. Well, if it's waiting for me to parse--

I have it! Somehow they heard that I used to be an academic teaching freshman comp and have sent me over something to parse! @:-)

Well, it's an idea, anyway.

We're moving offtopic, but HTML is not a subset of XML. They are both subsets of SGML.