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Re: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...

• To: bob@w...
• Subject: Re: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
• From: Dennis Sosnoski <dms@s...>
• Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:07:03 -0800
• Cc: "'Elliotte Rusty Harold'" <elharo@m...>, "'Jeff Lowery'" <Jeff.Lowery@c...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <004d01c3b075$9552a730$650aa8c0@BOBDEV>
• References: <004d01c3b075$9552a730$650aa8c0@BOBDEV>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

Bob Wyman wrote:

>Dennis Sosnoski wrote:
>  
>
>>When dealing with the outside world many applications 
>>want to use XML for all the standard reasons. In reality,
>>though, it's only the Infoset that they care about. 
>>    
>>
>	The contention that "only the Infoset" really matters is one
>of the key sources of conflict between the two sides of the "binary vs
>text" debate. Supporters of binary encodings generally consider the
>primacy of the Infoset to be intuitively obvious. Those opposed to
>binary often argue that encoding is more important. This is, of
>course, downright baffling for the binary folk. Clearly, it isn't
>quite so intuitive or we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>
Hi Bob,

I think we're in agreement on the issues, but just want to clarify that 
I'm not saying "only the Infoset" in a general sense. People often find 
text XML documents much more accessible than an equivalent Infoset 
representation. I do myself - given the choice between an XML editor 
that gives an Infoset-like tree display and one that just does text with 
smart tag handling I'll take the latter every time (jEdit is my favorite).

When it comes to an application taking XML input and doing something 
with it, though, very few applications are concerned with anything other 
than the Infoset (and the ones that *are* concerned about more than the 
Infoset are XML tools). That's what I meant by my "only the Infoset" 
statement, and I don't see how there's much grounds for disputing it in 
that context (though I may be wrong... :-) ).

  - Dennis

• References:
  • RE: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
    • From: "Bob Wyman" <bob@w...>

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