Re: [xml-dev] XML-formatted data can be incrementally enriched withmore

[John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

Suppose the data is binary. For example, suppose the data is a JPEG file. How would you incrementally enrich JPEG files? How would you bundle together multiple JPEG files and provide data about the bundle?

Technically, JPEG is not a file format, just a standard for encoding images.  The file formats most commonly used for JPEG images are Exif and JFIF, and they are both extensible.  PNG is also an extensible format.  There are tools png2sng and sng2png that convert between PNG and an ASCII representation of it that is easy to edit or manipulate with standard tools. 

 

Lesson Learned: XML is the only data format that supports incremental enrichment.

 

/Roger

 

P.S. I reckon JSON-formatted data can also be incrementally enriched.

That's a big point to put in a postscript (and by the way, PostScript and PDF are incrementally extensible).