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Hi, One more mail for the day -- I think we should take a look once at "XML in 10 points" - available at the W3C's page -- http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points It emphasizes that XML will be a text format and not a binary format -- 1. XML is a method for putting structured data in a text file 3. XML is text, but isn't meant to be read 5. XML is verbose, but that is not a problem especially the explanation for 5 might be useful. cheers and regards - murali. On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, David Brownell wrote: > > > Binary formats are bad because they tend towards being > > > proprietary, and that's the last thing that should happen to > > > the world's next "intellectual commons". > > > > True in the document world, perhaps. But not so obviously true > > in the protocol world. For example, DNS question and answer > > payloads are an example of an open, structured, binary format. > > I'm fully aware. But you also ought to consider exactly how > open and extensible DNS is -- by seeing whether you can > get to two hands when you count implementations (BIND, > and hardly any other servers), and extensions (rare). > > Basically, every binary RPC protocol I've ever seen has been > converted, sooner or later, into a conduit for proprietary > platforms. Fragmenting a previously-unified (XML=text) > world by creating a binary variant seems a fine start, for any > organizations wanting to head that direction. Large vendors > can afford the duplicate investments, when they can forsee > it opens the door to more vendor lock-in. The rest of the world > may well prefer to do smarter things with their time/money > than helping raise more barriers to market entry. > > There's also the "out of sight, out of mind" issue. Once things > get binary, the number of people who can detect mistakes > (much less shenanigans!) declines by orders of magnitude. > That means that interop becomes more fragile; which also > pushes things towards proprietary behaviors/bugsets. > > - Dave > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org, an initiative of OASIS > <http://www.oasis-open.org> > > The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > > To unsubscribe from this elist send a message with the single word > "unsubscribe" in the body to: xml-dev-request@l... >
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