• To: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Xml is _not_ selfdescribing
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 11:16:11 -0800
• In-reply-to: <p04330105b869f5ad2c8c@[192.168.254.4]>
• References: < <E6CDEF4DFA31524D83641C6B9550AF77013FE9D2@e...><E6CDEF4DFA31524D83641C6B9550AF77013FE9D2@e...>

At 10:16 AM 15/01/02 -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>At 2:52 PM +0100 1/15/02, Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI wrote:
>>I think that it is fair to conclude now, that XML is _not_ any more selfdescribing than e.g. CSV files.
>
>That's ridiculous. XML absolutely is more self-describing than CSV. Nothing here has proven otherwise.  

I can see JJAndersen's point.  XML is self-*labeling*... i.e. the
various chunks of data are labeled, and the labels are right there
so you don't need to go anywhere else to find the labels.  I think
this is one of XML's important virtues.  

I can see Elliote's point too, but claiming "self-describing" 
potentially gets you on the slippery slope to claiming that
markup encodes semantics, which is a very dangerous place to
be. -Tim

• References:
  • Xml is _not_ selfdescribing
    • From: "Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI" <jens.jakob.andersen@p...>
  • Re: Xml is _not_ selfdescribing
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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