Re: [xml-dev] XML vs JSON

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

> 
> A document-oriented XML document looks more like an HTML page with mixed content, XHTML and docbook being two prominent examples:
> 
> <paragraph>This is <bold>bold</bold> text and this is <italic>italic</italic> text</paragraph>
> 


I like to say that the defining characteristic of pure document-oriented XML (I sometimes call it "narrative XML") is that if you remove the markup, you are left with meaningful human-readable text.

And I always felt that the reason XML became so popular was not its ability to handle pure narrative XML, but its ability to mix structured data and textual narrative in a single message. So often (consider a CV/resume) you want to handle both at the same time. XML thus brought document processing capability to the data processing masses; and by reverting to JSON, the data processing masses are saying "that's too difficult for us to cope with".

Michael Kay
Saxonica