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Re: XML Binary Characterization WG public list availabl e

• To: "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw@l...>
• Subject: Re: XML Binary Characterization WG public list availabl e
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 10:02:00 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <4079588A.3090709@l...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE03F9F5EB@h...><4079588A.3090709@l...>

At 10:39 AM -0400 4/11/04, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>Optimized XML is XML which has been tweaked to retain its existing 
>advantages while improving those aspects that need improving in 
>various circumstances.  I.e. better (or no) parsing, serialization, 
>memory usage, CPU, size, avoidance of encoding (of binary image data 
>for instance), fidelity, etc.

XML is text. There is no binary data in XML. You can encode text in 
binary, and you can encode binary in text using a variety of 
algorithms. However, if you're directly encoding binary data in your 
format that is not somehow a representation of text, then it is 
clearly not a representation of XML. It is something els, and that 
something else may be useful (I certainly don't think digital 
photographs should be encoded in XML) but it is still not XML. Not 
only that it cannot be processed with standard XML tools  and APIs. 
XSLT, SAX, DOM, XPath, XQuery, XOM, have no means of representing 
arbitrary binary data. The "avoidance of encoding (of binary image 
data for instance)" means you've clearly moved beyonds the realm of 
XML. What you are then proposing is a new format, not an optimization 
of XML.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo@m...
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA

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    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
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