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Re: What is XML For?

• To: "'The Deviants'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: What is XML For?
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 18:40:34 -0500
• In-reply-to: <20021028223124.E4ACB5542@c...>

alaric@a... (Alaric Snell) writes:
>Pah! One of my pet peeves, things that were designed by "Hmmm, we have
>a hammer, what looks like a nail?" :-)

That's a reasonable complaint, though in this case I think an army of
carpenters grabbed this charming lightweight ball-peen hammer and set
off to work with it while its creators looked about confused. Works
great on rivets, may not be the thing for nails.

>It's been bandied about. I'm quite keen on defining a new notation for
>ASN.1 types that semantically the same as the existing one but:
>
>1) Has an ASN.1 abstract syntax of its own, eg a data model beyond
>just what's implicit in the BNF of the specification
>
>And probably but not necessarily, since this may be satisfiable by
>just using XER with (1):
>
>2) Has a nice easy to parse syntax for people to read
>
>And possibly:
>
>3) Doesn't bother with supporting the syntax for deprecated types; I
>see "keeping it simple" as more important than "allowing ancient specs
>to be brought into it without updating them".
>
>Oooh, I've just had a fun idea; SER, sexpr encoding rules, which fill
>a similar niche to XER but are less Alaric-angering... that'd be a
>workable solution for (2) in my book of nested parenthesis!

That sounds like a great set of ideas.  After reading the Larmouth and
Dubisson books, I was very impressed but not very excited about ASN.1.
Your 1 and 2 seem to cut to the core, but I'd recommend doing (3) as
well.  TeletexString is great for nostalgia, but...

-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

• References:
  • Re: What is XML For?
    • From: Alaric Snell <alaric@a...>

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