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From: "Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI" <jens.jakob.andersen@p...> >> >2. XML in itself is no more advanced than CSV. >> >> I still disagree on that; hierarchical self-describing markup >> IS a definite advance over CSV. > >This is one of the hypes about XML, that I'd like to defuse. XML is not any more self-describing than >CSV files. E.g. > ><99874987kjhk> ><gnygngyasdada> >What is this? ></gnygngyasdada> ></99874987kjhk> > >Case proved? No. The first element name is not well-formed XML (unless Blubbery ends up allowing initial digits). The second element name shows that documents are difficult to understand if they don't have human-readable names: if the name is not clear the document is just as unclear as CSV. This seems the opposite of the point you are making. In programming languages, no-one would seriously suggest that because you can make up misleading names for variables, we should never use symbolic names at all. And even <gnygngyasdada> might make sense for a private DTD if it is a contracted name made from particles in a controlled vocabulary, for example. "Self-describing" (a term I don't much care for) seems to mean that data is nested in a label (element or attribute), and that the gist of the label will be generally comprehensible by a professional reading it (in an appropriate language). XML 1.0 enforces the first constraint and helps the second (by banning characters that could not be used in a readable name, such as dingbats) as far as possible. (Also there may be some idea that self-labelling involves associating the name with some kind of schema rules.) But I do agree that the term "self-describing" does seem open for misinterpretation by anyone who has not looked at XML for more than a minute: it may suggest that XML forces one to use names from some global controlled vocabulary, or that it does more than a simple sanity check on the names. Cheers Rick Jelliffe
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