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>-----Message d'origine----- >De : Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@m...] >Envoye : mardi 15 janvier 2002 16:42 >A : xml-dev@l... >Objet : Re: SV: SV: XML=WAP? And DOA? ... >>The point is that XML can be as opaque as anything else, and that >>tags, in and of themselves, say little about overall semantics, and >>hardly anything about structure beyond encoding an attributed tree. >> > >No, that misses point completely. The point is not whether XML *can* >be as opaque as anything else. It whether XML *is* as opaque as >anything else. In practice, XML *is* far less opaque than CSV and >similar formats. That's why it's important. And in practice tag names >do say something significant about the semantics of the document. >It's not everything, but not everything does not equal nothing. Maybe what we try to say is that from a programmatical point of view, there is no added information in a format where the meta-data is embedded into the data, compared to a format where meta-data is expressed in a header and pure data follows. The only advantage is for human eyes ; it is great for debugging. But one should never think that embedding meta-data within data gives any advantage to XML vs. "header-then-data" formats. Your definition of "opacity" is anthropomorphical ; from a computer perspective, XML and CSV are equally crystal clear on the lexical level and completely opaque on the semantic level. Regards, Nicolas
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