Re: [xml-dev] JSON, tides and XML

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 4/28/13 6:06 PM, w3c@drrw.info wrote:
> Adults

Yes, this is where is gets ugly.  XML folks seem to think they're more 
grown up than people working with other approaches.  Though perhaps the 
XML community is graying?  (I am.)

> should really be using XML for extended information exchanges, and
> especially for country, state or international standards.

Much of my point in this recent conversation - the piece that really 
seems to make people angry, in any case - is that creating such 
standards is a bad idea, and schema a particularly dangerous enabler. As 
a result, that claim doesn't have much positive effect on me.

It likely has more appeal to most everyone else here, however.

> You may be able to get away with JSON for something really trivial
> and local - such as town bus route numbers, bus stops and times of
> the next bus - as an open data feed - but for anything with real
> substance and content depth and relationships and semantics - you are
> IMHO going to want what XML provides to handle that.

I no longer see the advantage of trying to stamp everything into 
excessively specified XML formats so you can talk with the humans as 
rarely as possible.  I know that's been the EDI dream forever, but it's 
a perverse dream at best.

When you actually have conversations with the people whose computers are 
communicating with your computers, there are other paths to "real 
substance", "content depth", and even semantics.  They aren't global 
standards.

XML has a deep advantage over JSON, in that its verbosity and structure 
makes it easier to transform.  However, JSON practice, in particular its 
deep aversion to standardizing conversation by committee, gives it 
practical advantages that don't appear very often in XML culture.

Instead, we grudgingly convert back and forth and wonder why those 
strange people don't appreciate our tools and approach.

Thanks,
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/