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Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome fr

• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
• From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
• Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:13:57 -0800
• In-reply-to: <42090EC7.2000803@m...>
• References: <075E1759251CCB49ABF05D8F742AFE2704D0816D@R...> <42090EC7.2000803@m...>
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This points out something that should be a requirement for binary XML: 
lossless roundtripping. In other words, you should be able to go from 
the text serialization to the binary serialization and back losslessly 
(within the confines of canonical XML). Same is true for binary <=> 
text, binary <=> binary, and (of course) text <=> text.

Note that this is not true for conversions to non-XML formats, such as 
XML <=> relational or XML <=> CSV, as those formats do not claim to be 
XML and cannot necessarily represent all things XML.

Elliotte Harold wrote:
> It's plausible that one could define a numeric format for integer types. 
> You'd have a little trouble dealing with arbitrarily sized integers (the 
> number 217836127368127638712638721638712368127638712638172368127 is much 
> easier to write in an XML document than to process in C, Java or 
> Fortran) but that's surmountable. Once you hit floating point types, 
> though, the problems become Everest sized. Even if a simple example such 
> as 1.2 loses information if encoded as an IEEE-754 float or double, as 
> are used by most modern platforms.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
    • From: Bob Foster <bob@o...>
  • Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
    • From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>

• References:
  • RE: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" myth come from?
    • From: "Derek Denny-Brown" <derekdb@m...>
  • Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
    • From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>

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