[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
<Quote>
It's bad for a number of reasons.
[reasons follow]
</Quote>
Amen!
Kind Regards,
Joe Chiusano
Booz | Allen | Hamilton
"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
>
> Patrick.Garvey@talaris.com writes:
> >Perverse is a very strong term to use.
>
> It was as polite a word as I could find.
>
> >markup is also cool for separating data and processes that act on that
> >data. yes, it's pretty heavyweight and there's all kinds of more
> >lightweight data interchange formats, but XML has got all this inertia
> >behind it and really great toolsets. Otright disparaging the use of
> >markup for purely machine communication can't be mainstream either. As
> >long as you can pay someone (or get paid for) debugging a bunch of
> ><UDWhatever_22> tags, then fine -- you get to use all the fancy APIs.
> >Why is this bad? Purely maintenance, IMHO.
>
> It's bad for a number of reasons.
>
> First, lousy markup design - for that's what I'll call it - sets bad
> precedents for people. If all I've encountered is <UDWhatever_22>, and
> that's what I think XML is, I'm liable to run like hell rather than deal
> with XML unless I'm paid an awful lot. (That's my general response to
> RDF/XML, and apparently it's not an unusual reaction.)
>
> Second, that kind of markup is only useful until we can't find the
> documentation any more. For cases where the documentation is always
> going to be absolutely positively necessary, maybe that's fine.
>
> Third, you're accepting all the costs of markup - text processing,
> verbose descriptions, etc. - and getting only a few of the benefits. If
> machine to machine communication is all you care about, there are much
> more efficient yet still interoperable ways to do it. Momentum's great,
> until the wave stops and you're left on a barren beach, far from the
> next potential improvement.
>
> Fourth, you're pretty much declaring that your markup is only to be
> handled by trained professionals. I guess that works fine with the cult
> of the programmer-priest, but it's not much good for the folks who
> actually like to get their hands dirty with the data but aren't
> necessarily programmers.
>
> That's a brief list; I'll be happy to come up with more if provoked.
>
> One of my hopes for the W3C Binary Infosets meeting is that someone
> realizes that markup is a crappy solution for a lot of the projects
> people are using it for, and that perhaps they'll be able to come up
> with better answers more appropriate to the tasks and programming
> cultures where XML has landed.
>
> --
> Simon St.Laurent
> Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
> Errors, errors, all fall down!
> http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
> initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
>
> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
begin:vcard
n:Chiusano;Joseph
tel;work:(703) 902-6923
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:www.bah.com
org:Booz | Allen | Hamilton;IT Digital Strategies Team
adr:;;8283 Greensboro Drive;McLean;VA;22012;
version:2.1
email;internet:chiusano_joseph@bah.com
title:Senior Consultant
fn:Joseph M. Chiusano
end:vcard
|
