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RE: Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and easier to aut

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and easier to author) XML
• From: Doug Ransom <Doug.Ransom@p...>
• Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 11:07:40 -0700

What is the value in non-invasivity?

XML is a context-free language.  Perl is effective at matching regular
expressions.  I have found in almost every circumstance that Perl +
byte-stream is always more complicated that XML based processing (ie. using
DOM, SAX, XSLT etc, possibly in conjunction with a higher level language
like perl).  

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean McGrath [mailto:sean.mcgrath@p...]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 1:02 AM
> To: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re:  Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and
> easier to author) XML
> 
> 
> Tim Bray]
> [
>  >I don't think any of them are cost-effective.  If you're 
> not 100% sure 
> what you're getting,
>  >use a real XML processor and the problems go away. -Tim
> 
> I won't go over the old ground again [1] but this is where 
> the problems start
> rather than go away for read/write XML applications.
> 
> If I use Perl or something, my app is simple, non-invasive to the 
> byte-stream, but possibly
> wrong. If I use an infoset (e.g. I parse the source) my app 
> is not simple, 
> invasive to
> the byte stream but right.
> 
> Achieving non-invasivity + correctness only comes at the 
> expense of simplicity.
> 
> For nuclear reactors and heart monitors, we need correctness. 
> Sadly it 
> appears that
> complexity is thus thrust upon us. All because, in my 
> opinion, there is no way
> to specify, up front and personal, that your XML data DOES 
> NOT use CDATA 
> sections,
> tags embedded in comments, internal doctype subsets, pi's in 
> the epilog 
> etc. etc.
> 
> If I had such a thing in the XML rec, I could rest easy with my simple
> Perl (actually Python :-) programs even in the face of 
> possible upstream
> changes.
> 
> Sean
> 
> [1] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200102/msg00584.html
> 
> 
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