RE: [xml-dev] Four fine text-based data formats ... liberateyourself fro

[David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>]

This thread is really getting really unintelligible to me but hey that's why I subscribe.  Its good to have my brain hurt.
I will avoid commentary on the most  but I have 2 I can't help but reply.

1) (Verbosity is the other common explanation.)
<shameless plug>
If you truly buy into this, or don't ! ... I would love you to put your 2 minutes where your mouth is and help establish
some scientific evidence.
Please visit
   http://speedtest.xmlsh.org

I will be having a public crow-eating party with the results.  Not sure who will be eating the crow so stay tuned.  It could be me.  Please help humiliate me in public.  Whatever it takes to get volunteers !

2) "Plain text" 
WTF? Ignoring things like encoding, codepage, 7 or a bit, language , etc ...
Why stop there ? Why not Binary (streams of bytes... shit are those 5,6,7 or 8 bit byte ... 12 ? 16? ) ... 
But why stop there ... how about streams of Bits ...  We all know what BITS mean right ? Yes or no.  1 or zero, true or false.
who could get confused with  bits ... 
But why stop there how about streams of abstract symbols .. or why even help the user out with a sequence dimension,
how about I send you a slab of rock with some scratchings on it.   I will be very careful to NOT send any out of band information like what direction the scratches should be interpreted or if the density of the rock or width of scratches encodes meaningful data.  Hell ... I wont even tell you if the whole thing was just dug out of my backward or is an order for new iPad with my credit card number on it.   Or maybe its porn.   

Have fun.



----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org