Re: [xml-dev] Re: A question about the future of efficient XML

[Robin Berjon <robin@joost.com>]

On Jun 11, 2007, at 00:04, Stephen Green wrote:
> A key area to watch may be whether and how XML might make inroads into
> the electronic paper domain - such as XPS, PDF and an XML mechanism to
> update such electronic paper - UOML. The tradition to make  
> electronic paper
> a binary format, uneditable/unreadable by text-based editors could  
> perhaps be
> at a turning point. This could put the whole issue right into the  
> eyes of a huge
> business and developer audience. Will everyone stick with binary  
> for this or
> accept some compromises towards text-like XML? Or will the world  
> stick at
> binary format based on XML? Or keep to binary with updating by  
> something
> in XML text just as SQL text updates a binary database? Is this a  
> test case
> in the making? Interesting to watch what is happening with PDF, XPS  
> and
> UOML and compare it to the history and perhaps the future of  
> databases.

The issues surrounding electronic documents are well-described in the  
XBC Use Cases document (http://www.w3.org/TR/xbc-use-cases/).  
Everyone wants XML for these (in a zip archive, but all the same),  
but one of the the biggest issues is saving edits done in the middle  
of a (potentially very long) document. You don't want to have a full  
DOM in memory, you don't want to have to write out the entire file on  
all saves, etc. There are workarounds and various strategies, but  
most of those tend to be ugly.

I guess we'll see within a year or two what comes of that. Whatever  
happens I'm pretty sure all the upcoming e-paper formats will be  
based on a standard; it's a common-sense requirement from users, and  
besides I'm pretty sure no one at Microsoft has a genuine clue about  
everything that's stored in an average Office document.

--
Robin Berjon
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