Re: Using W3C Regular Expressions

[Robin Berjon <robin@knowscape.com>]

At 00:35 20/04/2001 +0100, Al Snell wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Anders W. Tell wrote:
>> However a number of reasons exists
>> - Using string syntax enhances  the readability.
>> - Size, SVG path strings are more compact.
>> - DOM bloat,  large DOM trees could be created.
>> 
>> Of course the question is if these arguments are valid...

Readability is imho a valid argument. XPath as it is is more readable than
any XML equivalent (this is not a comment on the quality of the XML
representations that have been submitted here and elsewhere, they serve a
different purpose and I'm already using Matt Sergeant's excellent
representation in some projects).

Size otoh is not really a good argument. Gz-compressed SVG is really small
(smaller than the other vector graphic formats that I've benchmarked it
against), and it wouldn't be much larger if paths used markup instead.
However, SVG paths wouldn't be much more humanly readable as markup than
they are as strings so that point is pretty moot in the context of SVG
(which has a few weird things such as rect for rectangle and g for group
but still ellipse, polyline, polygon instead of ell, pline, pgon...).

><snipe class="troll" allowable-replies="non-flammable only">
>So much for XML as the universal data interchange language if the core
>standards are already hitting its limitations and having to embed other
>languages in it :-(
></snipe>

That's not a fair comment (but you did say so). I don't think the core
standards are hitting limitation in XML, though they may be hitting
limitations in markup, which I don't think they can be blamed for.
//foo[@bar='gork'] is easier to understand and to write than any equivalent
XML vocabulary could ever be. The limits are on the human side (because
people read and write those things) not on the side of the expressive power
of XML.

That being said, more powerful regexen in XML Schema would be very welcome :)

_______________________________________________________________________
Robin Berjon <robin@knowscape.com> -- CTO
k n o w s c a p e : // venture knowledge agency www.knowscape.com
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