Re: Ten Years Later - XML 1.0 Fifth Edition?

[Stephen-NHDS <sbeller@nhds.com>]

It seems to me that the very nature of the text-based markup method is
causing this Unicode incompatibility problem. An elegant solution for many
situations is available if we shift from a string-based language to
"positional-based" method. This solution involves transforming XML documents
into grid-based files (such as spreadsheets), in which (a) the cells of each
column are populated with the element or attribute values sharing the same
XML name, (b) the columns are arranged in a manner that maintains
hierarchies, and (b) the values in each cell in a row are associated.

The resulting grid could then be queried easily and its contents formatted
based on their cellular positions. Any Unicode characters can be used in the
names and values, e.g., Excel can accommodate all Unicode 5.0 characters via
the code2000 font, as well as using a character's code decimal value in its
macros. And the grid could be saved as a delimited text file, without the
overhead of tags and tag-based parsing.

I realize this paradigm shift isn't easy for many to comprehend, but it can
be done and is worth exploration, imo.

Steve