Re: [xml-dev] It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On 31/12/2021 01:45, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
[snip]
> There were some measurements done years and years ago in the "Binary 
> XML Characterization" Working Group, or whatever it was called, 
> chartered at W3C to work out if a binary transport for XML was a
> good idea.

I had forgotten all about that, thank you.

> Some (same place) along with e.g. a participant who had XML
> documents that took 12 hours or more to parse, much of which time was
> spent converting strings into floating point numbers.

Excellent example.

> If you don't have DTDs I'm not sure you need PIs. 

I think they'd still be needed for interoperability and signalling to
downstream processes, regardless of the author's editing environment.

> At the time we made XML I wanted a reserved xml element for metadata;

"It's a database dump of metadata. What do I put in the metadata?"

> Note that JavaScript was equally amenable to the "billion laughs" 
> attack, and that this was resolved by limiting the size of
> JavaScript strings.

I think we've all been bitten by a "640K" syndrome at some stage.

> Linked Data has some merits. 

Many, but I'm still trying, occasionally, to persuade people.

> The biggest question beyond that for me is, who is to be in control
> of the format of the data? If it's the application developer at the
> receiving end, use JSON. If the data is to be vendor-neutral and have
> a long lifespan, consider XML.
I'd like to add that to the XML FAQ page on JSON, if you would permit,
pretty please.

Peter