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Sorry,
I didn't mean to imply that human-readability isn't useful, just that it's
more useful to developers than to business-level end-users (who shouldn't have
to be reading it at all). Yet I've seen Internet consulting firms,
trying to show potential clients how they can take advantage of XML,
demonstrating sample applications that expose the XML to the business-level
end-user, just because readability has been key to XML's rapid acceptance. (Or,
if they're demonstrating dev tools, they expose XML to the end-user - the
developer - at times when it isn't really necessary). Maybe it's just me,
though.
Also,
has anyone here found the extra reading/writing time inherent in XML's
verbosity (as compared to other protocols) to be a problem, as some claim? I can
see why you wouldn't send XML over an EDI VAN, for instance. But otherwise I
would think that the processing to be done on the data itself, especially if
user interaction is involved, would greatly outweigh the extra time needed to
read/write the data in XML form. Has anyone actually encountered
a situation where XML's verbosity became a hindrance?
Thanks
for any and all input!
Umm... human readability is useful. It takes some practice,
but
even when an IDE is more productive, occasionally you
have
to open the file and poke and peek. Note that even
with
all of the Visual apps, you still need to edit code. True
for
C, Basic, Java etc and just as true for XML.
Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
Ekam
sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta.
Dayadhvam.h
Sorry if this is an old, dead horse on this
list, but does anyone see any substance in the supposed "separation of
content from presentation" feature of XML?
Since we had this years ago with
databases and server-side scripts, I'm thinking this (and certain
other misconceptions) are just attempts
to create visual, easily demonstrable
features for what is an inherently
non-visual technology. Since XML no
doubt owes some of its hype to its (distant) relation to HTML, which is
visual, people wanted to be shown features of XML that they could
"see."
In the same vein, has anyone else noticed lots
of demonstrations of XML-using applications that make a point of
exposing the XML itself, as if its readability were an asset to the end
user? Since XML works in the background, it's hard to demonstrate its
effects on the application from the user's point of view.
I'm thinking that being able to explain the
root causes of these misconceptions will help me in explaining to people why
they ARE misconceptions.
Thanks!
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