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Rich Salz wrote:
> Let's ignore the Infoset. But if we posit
> XML --> a binary serialization --> XML
>
> how does that atively damage the XML community?
First, you have to realize that most binary proposals to not in fact
posit that. They either superset or subset or only intersect with
regular XML. But if we rule all those formats out, there are still problems:
1. Patents are beginning to invade this space, closing off
interoperability and open software.
2. The data that's transmitted in this binary format is less inspectable
than data in the regular XML format.
3. Software vendors will publish tools that only consume the binary
data; and therefore systems will refuse to accept the textual data.
4. Binary parsers often forgo well-formedness checks such as name
characters that textual parsers make. They incorrectly assume that
nobody can or will inject broken data into the system.
These problems are not insurmountable, but once you surmount them you're
very close to reinventing real XML, and being about as fast and maybe
marginally slower.
Anyway, that's just four issues. But really this is a moot point. The
vast majority of proposals do not provide bijections between real XML
and their custom format. Many add pieces. Almost all remove pieces they
don't consider relevant be that white space or document type
declarations or element order or mixed content or something else. There
are several well-supported, well-understood, small binary formats for
XML already. They're called .xml.gz, .xml.zip, .xml.bz2 and so forth.
Just about anything more XML aware than these, though, is unlikely to be
bijective.
--
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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