Re: "Binary XML" proposals

[Peter Jacobi <pj@walter-graphtek.com>]

Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:
> Absent some good strong empirical evidence, neither processing
> nor storage cost are a priori arguments for going binary.

So, why has MPEG-7 choosen binary? Some sort of seekability? Also 
medical data acquisition for data volume intensive modalities effectively 
has choosen binary. 

Separating "bulk" from "structured" data will enable using textual XML for 
the "structured" data. Some application need locality, so "structured" 
and "bulk" must be multiplexed, as in the multipart/BEEP proposal we 
have seen some days ago.

But this isn't necessarily easier to use than a binary external 
representation for XML. And in contrast to the proposals of extending 
XML for binary content, using a binary external presentation for standard 
XML will be invisible to all newer W3C Recommendations and to all tools 
which use some sort of layered approach.

Regards,
Peter Jacobi