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Re: XML Sucks

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: XML [expletive deleted]
• From: Mike Kozlowski <mlk@k...>
• Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:50:57 -0400 (EDT)
• In-reply-to: <ubryhr5xc.fsf@s...>
• References: <5.1.0.14.0.20030505115354.02807b38@m...><ubryhr5xc.fsf@s...>

On Mon, 5 May 2003, Paul Jensen wrote:

> >          http://www.artima.com/intv/plain4.html
>  | Andy Hunt: Yeah, a genuine grammar. I want to be able to type
>  | something simple and easy for me. I don't care if it's easy for the
>  | tool to parse, that's the tool's problem. I want it to be easy for
>  | me to write. And in cases like that, it's really the case of the
>  | programmer saying, "Oh look, here's an XML parser. I can just take
>  | XML files. That's easier." So one programmer in one context puts a
>  | burden on the other 100,000 programmers trying to use it.
>
> Spot on. I certainly remember feeling a similar sentiment when I began
> using Ant. I want to write my Ant buildfiles in "Ant", not in "XML".

That's precisely what I don't want to do.  The best thing about XML
configuration files is that I already know the syntax -- I don't need to
remember whether it's #, //, or ; that marks a comment, whether I need a
special character at the end of every line, what character I use to quote
strings, how I do escaping, or anything.  With XML files, the syntax is
standard and universal.

(Plus, XML-aware editors make it easy to only view the parts of a large
configuration file that matter to me, while ignoring the uninteresting
parts.)

-- 
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/

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