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Henrik Martensson wrote:
>>>The purpose of XML is to enable as much automation as possible. Using a
>>>text editor to write XML documents is missing the point of using XML in
>>>the first place!
>>
>>Horsefeathers.
>
>
> "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is
> completely described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic
> SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is
> now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation
> and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML."
>
> "The design goals for XML are:
>
> 1. XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
>
> 2. XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
>
> 3. XML shall be compatible with SGML.
>
> 4. It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
>
> 5. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the
> absolute minimum, ideally zero.
>
> 6. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
>
> 7. The XML design should be prepared quickly.
>
> 8. The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
>
> 9. XML documents shall be easy to create.
>
> 10. Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance."
>
> Both quotes are from Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third
> Edition)
>
> XML is designed for automation. What it isn't designed for, is authoring
> by humans. (Whether it is _suitable_ for authoring by humans is a
> different issue.)
The word "automation" does not appear once in that list. All you can
infer from the list of design goals is that
a) Computer-assisted processing should be relatively feasible to develop
b) XML should do the same kinds og things (generically) as SGML,
c) People and computers should both find it easy to create XML documents.
It specifically IS designed for authoring by people (and machines too),
and the language above reflects that notion. Of course, you don't have
to use it that way, depending on the nature of your task.
Cheers,
Tom P
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