[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: terra incognita
----- Original Message ----- From: "Al Snell" <alaric@a...> > On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Jeff Lowery wrote: > > > > The original poster mentioned CSVs which for all intents and > > > purposes will > > > always be smaller files than their XML counterparts. > > > > Of course, CSV's aren't self-describing. I've spent many hours trying to > > debug CSV output and the eye-crossover point occurs much sooner with CSV > > than with XML. Data handles are handy. > > CSV can be self describing, if you use the common variant that has column > headings in the first row :-) Well ... the 'original poster' was me, so I would insist that if trying to 'improve' CSV it would result in something very close to XML. For example, when column names are 'annotated', but also must be unique within a schema this is not too much different from the : <A property1="some value" property2 = "some value"/> Comparing this XML with the annotated CSV, XML has small overhead. However, CSV has no 'arrays' in it , so after tweaking CSV for 'readability', 'nested arrays' e t.c. - one may end up with something like : A property="value" { B { value } C { value } } e t.c. Which is almost XML. In fact, just adding </> to XML would turn it into 'really nice CSV', that would allow <A> some text </> Of course, then one can easily ruin this CSV with, namespaces, weird macroprocessor, pseudo-validation and other useless things, but my point is that XML is not only the markup language. I think that if just trying to put CSV on steroids ( readability + arrays ) that could result in something like XML, so *that* side of XML makes it OK for serializations. Sorry if it sounds messy ... XML *is* messy ... Rgds.Paul. PS. You know the history behind "qwerty" keyboard? I mean why the keys are located in that particular order... Everybody, whom I ask, usually answers : "by frequency, so we can type faster". Very ... educational ... http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/history.html
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