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Re: What is XML For?

• To: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: What is XML For?
• From: "Anthony B. Coates" <abcoates@T...>
• Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 11:17:23 +0100
• In-reply-to: <A476EE70-E7F7-11D6-B61C-0030657E2F34@m...>
• References: <3DB83269.90407@p...> <A476EE70-E7F7-11D6-B61C-0030657E2F34@m...>
• Reply-to: "Anthony B. Coates" <abcoates@T...>

** Reply to message from tblanchard@m... on Fri, 25 Oct 2002 10:56:25 +0200

Speaking of things that only a mother could love, I think a better XML approach
would be along the lines of

<library>
  <CD>
    <artist>Alice Cooper</artist>
    <title>Goes To Hell</artist>
  </CD>
</library>

which is no harder to write than your curly braces version, especially if you
are using an XML editor that at least knows how to put in the close tags.  You
can always use a stylesheet to generate your verbose XML sample below.  If you
compare the literal XML-isation of a text format to the original text format,
the XML version will always look bigger and uglier, but that is because literal
transformations, like literal translations of languages, usually produce poor
results.  You need to think about how you would *really* approach the problem
from each side of the technology divide.

	Cheers,
		Tony.

> Yeah, but the XML representation is so fugly that nobody that writes 
> one by hand uses the XML format.  Also, I think you'd cringe yourself 
> at what is represented - nothing semantically interesting.  You get 
> something like (off the top of my head)
> 
> <dictionary><key>CDs</key>
> 	<array>
> 		<item><dictionary>
> 			<key>artist</key><string>Alice Cooper</string>
> 			<key>title</key><string>Goes To Hell</string></dictionary>
> 		</item>
> 	</array>
> </dictionary>
> 
> vs
> 
> { CDs = (
> 		{ artist = "Alice Cooper"; title = "Goes To Hell"; }
> 	);
> }
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
mailto:abcoates@T...
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/

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