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Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Robin Berjon wrote:
>> Then maybe this would be a nice time to explain how XML is being
>> broken instead of handwaving FUD in people's faces on xml-dev? To
>> paraphrase you somewhat, right now you tend to sound a lot like a
>> Republican president looking for WMDs.
>
> Binary file formats are *broken*
All of them? I'm (not so) sorry but without a little more prose here
that's still hand-waving and quite FUDish, if not just plainly, simply,
obviously wrong. There's a bunch of binary file formats out there that I
like as binary thank-you-very-much.
> (I understand you're not personally guilty of all these sins, but there
> are definitely people participating in this thread who are.)
Sins? Are you now suggesting binary marriages should be forbidden too?
> If parts of XML cause unacceptable problems for wireless devices, feel
> free to invent a new format that does not have these problems, as long
> as you don't falsely call it XML. I certainly don't believe XML needs to
> be the one true data format. However, if you really don't think a new
> format can achieve adoption on its own merits without falsely waving the
> XML banner, then perhaps that format really isn't that good in the first
> place.
Well no one's calling binary XML, XML. People are putting the "XML" in
there to indicate it has a very strong relationship to the sort of stuff
that one finds in XML. It's semantic, not branding, not adoption. In
fact, a careful analysis of what people want in a more efficient binary
format yields a list that pretty much well defines XML itself, with
compactness and speed being the two additions.
> I refer anyone who wants a more detailed analysis of these points to
> Effective XML, especially items 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25,
> 30, 31, 36, 38, 40, and 50. Several of these are online at
> http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml/
Well, even just considering XML there are several of these that I
disagree with. Or rather, a lot discusses "how ERH would do it" vs "how
other people that may have different needs could do it", with
judgemental implications (interestingly enough, just as it is whenever
you FUD about binary) that only the former is correct (eg 11, or in a
different way, 50. "XML documents are almost always smaller than the
equivalent binary file format" is just a dirty lie, and claiming it's
true using Word documents as a comparison base for proof of that is just
amusing, if somewhat dishonest). Because of this, even when I have
equally strong and identical opinions about some of those parts, I'm
uncomfortable agreeing with them. Maybe being a doc-head Perl hacker in
a binary world makes you listen to other people. Or something.
--
Robin Berjon
Research Scientist
Expway, http://expway.com/
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