RE: [xml-dev] XML is text-only ... why?

[Len Bullard <len.bullard@uai.com>]

XML inherits from SGML.  To work cross platform, SGML had to declare very
low in the stack.  With XML, Unicode made that less necessary although for
some legacy systems, SGML was still necessary.   Roger, for your own
edification, you should dig into the design of SGML (particularly the
Declaration File) and work out what kinds of differences in systems were
current then that are not now.

The answer to the last question possibly depends on which conversations you
sat in on in those days, but the statistical answer is yes.  XML is one step
above CSV:  named inline structures passed as text.  It is not the lowest
common denominator (that would be CSV) but the basis in text was well
understood and it had been observed that systems that tried to do a
type-laden system typically did not scale.

Yes, there are multiple kinds of integers.  When you build a client that has
to work with multiple databases (say, Oracle and SQL Server), you will
usually have code that is making the conversions.   Code such as that is the
symptom of type incompatibilities.  Type incompatibilities are one end of a
thread that when pulled unravels attempts to unify networked communications
at more complex levels such as CORBA.

len


From: David Carlisle [mailto:davidc@nag.co.uk] 
 
Yes, historically lots of different ways, these days 64 and 32 bit
 differences are especialy noticable.

> Is that why XML decided to be text-only?
I wasn't there.




David

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