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At 17:54 06/05/2003 -0400, Adam Turoff wrote:
>On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 11:56:43AM +0100, Sean McGrath wrote:
> > Quote:
> > "XML is useful in appropriate contexts, but it is being grossly abused in
> > most of the ways it is being used today."
> >
> > Here is the most XML-ish part:
> > http://www.artima.com/intv/plain4.html
> >
> > Full article starts here:
> > http://www.artima.com/intv/plain.html
> >
> > My take? Some of its right and some of its wrong. There was a time when
> > most of it was wrong. Back in the early days of XML before we layered all
> > the crud on that allows people to - quite understandably - balk at the
> > sheer complexity and not-for-human-consumption of XML 2003.
>
>Sounds like Dave and Andy are throwing out the baby with the bath water,
>and you're somewhat happy to help them do it.
Take a look at RelaxNG compact syntax. Beautiful.
Take a look at any of the myriad of languages that have tags for "if",
"while" etc.
Awful.
XML as a native syntax is not for everything. That way lies madness.
Is XML perfect for make files? For expressing structure transformations?
For spreadsheet formulae?
Having said that, isomorphisms from "native" syntaxes to XML syntaxes and
back again
(XML shadows), will be, I believe an increasingly appreciated technique to
keep baby and
bathwater together in the future.
Getting back to Andy and Dave. They unfortunately, have plenty of solid
ground to stand on these days
when it comes to complexity and not-for-human-consumption arguments these
days. Its now trendy to
produce XML that is about as human readable as The Laguna Copperplate
Inscription[1].
This is the inevitable result of the diminution in XML-as-text that comes
with infoset fixation I'm afraid.
Transformation is the only truth [2]
Sean
[1] http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/lci/lci.htm
[2] http://www.itworld.com/nl/xml_prac/08222002/
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