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> These questions maybe looking odd.... but just curious..
> 1) Is the way XML is written[strctured, tree fashion] just
> because of the
> structured nature of the data it represents? Why was this mode of
> representing a document chosen in first place?
Documents are naturally hierarchic: they have been so for thousands of
years.
The actual angle-bracket syntax is a product of the limited character
repertoires (48 characters?) of the 1960s.
>
> 2) XML is so verbose that it cannot be easily interpreted by a human
> audience.
> Why is it that there aren't two versions of an XML document -
> a "direct"
> human readable representation of the XML content [ other than
> using XSLT and
> making it readable], and another representation for
> processing it, which is
> compact and available for fast processing ?
A great deal of the success of XML is due to the fact that it found a
compromise representation which is reasonably suitable for both these roles.
>
> 3) Why is it that parsing an XML file leads to only a single
> XML Document?
Because the concept of an element is adequate to represent all hierarchical
subdivisions, you only need a different concept (the document) at the top
level (and arguably, you don't even need it there).
Michael Kay
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