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Liam Quin wrote:
> characters and text. But even a "plain US ASCII text file" is in fact
> in a binary format.
True for ASCII but not for XML. An XML document is not necessarily in a
binary format, though in practice most (but not all) are. XML is defined
in terms of characters, not bytes or bits. Non-binary representations of
characters such as printed matter and analog encodings can encode
well-formed XML documents. There's no rule that says the underlying
encoding for XML must be binary. Who knows what sorts of computing
devices we'll be using in a hundred years. Maybe they'll be quantum
computers that use qubits instead of bits. Maybe something we haven't
even thought of.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim
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