Re: [xml-dev] Is XML a language or a data format?

[Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

I am sure there are ample books devoted to good coverage of this. I
think of Document Engineering by R Glushko and T McGrath as one which
has this covered in a relevant XML-related context.
Data is compressed prose.
I could think of an example of a small UK charity publishing a record
of its Annual General Meeting in which it first publishes minutes of
the meeting, followed by a table of its annual accounts summary, which
can be seen as tabulated data. This data could instead have been
written as prose "In the first month of the year, January, we spent
£200 on office stationery. In the second month ..." but that would be
tedious to write and tedious to read. The table format circumvents the
tedium.

The tabulation of data historically preceded prose in Sumerian times
around 3500 BC in Uruk where accounts of donations to the temple were
recorded with symbols impressed into stone or clay tablets in a table
format, and understood by convention. Only around 3000 did prose
sentence construction appear to us in the archaeological record of Tel
Fara and surrounding towns around 2800 BC, the Fara Period, at which
point poetry as well as prose started to be written with symbols on
clay and stone tablets. (Examples: Instruction of Sharappak, and the
Temple Hymn of Kesh.) So historically the tabulated data idea is very
ancient and very well understood and underpins civilisation through
all of history in many parts of the world. It allows the recording of
financial accounts, for example, and documentation of individual
payments. Yet prose is an alternative which is almost as ancient and
allows expression of ideas and recording of human sentences, such as
the minutes of a meeting. The two have coexisted side-by-side
throughout human civilization in most 'advanced' cultures. Arguably
the existence of these two forms of writing has brought about
civilisation by allowing the persistence of knowledge between
generations.

That is my take
Regards
Stephen Green
----
Stephen D Green

On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 00:59, Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I passed along the two Michael's comments to the colleague who asserted that data formats don't have grammars. Below is his response. Do you agree with his response?  /Roger
> -----------------------------------------------------
> So I offer....
>
>       "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." -Yogi Berra
>
> First, to clarify, when I said a data format "doesn't have" a grammar, I did not mean that literally like in formal computer science (CS) terms.
>
> I meant it figuratively. The term "grammar" in the CS sense, is just not relevant. It lives alongside "spelling" and "algebra" as things one had to learn once (high school?), but these terms aren't used nor needed with reference to practical work with data.
>
> Rather, we data people use terms like structure, struct, record, and layout. And of course "format".
>
> Are these just synonyms for "grammar"? I claim no. They denote things that are simpler. E.g., one big difference is no recursion. Are these terms just "simplified grammars" in the CS sense? Yes. But the words used are my point here.
>
> Case in point: There is a military data spec document that is 5000 pages long and a large fraction of those pages describe the format of each of its messages.
> The term "grammar" does not appear anywhere in that 5000 page document.
> It is big, but it's 'just' a data format.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> My colleague went on to say that if you remove XML's recursion capability, then it may be used as a data format; otherwise, it is a language.
>
>