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Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?

• From: Marcus Reichardt <u123724@gmail.com>
• To: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
• Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 10:25:18 +0100

Isn't saying "the problem is that the SGML and XML designers never really imagined how popular XML would become for pure data interchange applications" really just a reformulation for "XML was repurposed for data interchange when it was just meant as a markup language for encoding text"?

While I don't find using XML for data exchange terrible, I see a lot of misconceptions stemming from this misuse. For example, the endless attributes-vs-elements usage discussion. Or, in fact, proposing to remove entities - a markup language without even text macros would be laughed out of the room as an authoring language. XML's sin facilitating XXE was to allow unbounded entity expansion (when it otherwise put severe restriction on entities) while SGML has CAPACITY ENTLVL.

Best,
M. Reichardt
sgml.io

> Am 29.12.2021 um 16:31 schrieb Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>:
> 
> the problem is that the SGML and XML designers never really imagined how popular XML would become for pure data interchange applications

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  • Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>