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[RFC] "Shlomi =?UTF-8?B?RmlzaOKAmXM=?= FAQ - Why are you stillusing XML?

• From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 15:47:13 +0300

hi all,

see https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/why_xml.xhtml :

```
Shlomi Fish’s Homepage → Meta Info → FAQ → About computing and software
development → Why are you still using XML?


With the advent of JSON, and similar formats such as YAML, some hipster geeks
have proclaimed that XML-based grammars no longer have any legitimate use.
However, while I use JSON and YAML for many tasks, I still find XML (and
related technologies such as DocBook 5, XPath, RELAX NG, and XSLT ) of use.
Part of the reason is that XML can be used to add markup to a substring of the
text, e.g.: like the <a> element:


<p>
I like <a href="http://example.com/" title="site">hyperlinks</a> in my XML.
</p>

I recall that some Lisp fans argued that XML is syntactic sugar for
S-expressions, but I think it is a moot point, because we can encode and decode
them both to/from a binary stream of 0s and 1s, JSON, or most other syntaxes.
Syntax, while often considered marginal, is nevertheless important, and I don't
think I'll enjoy writing text documents completely using S-expressions. I also
recall reading about a new language that allows mixing and matching both
lisp-like code and XML code.

Now, with respect to HTML 5, the Markdowns and AsciiDoc, while I use them
sometimes, they are less structured and more errorprone than many XML grammars,
and often are not semantic enough for all my use cases. I can use XSLT, Python,
or similar, to convert XML to XHTML5 anyway (and I often do).

Finally, note that I also use some custom formats such as this one or
Screenplay-Text.

```

what do you think?

-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Google-Discontinues-Services/

Chuck Norris was the 1,000,000,000th viewer of the Gangnam Style video on
YouTube. — https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Chuck-Norris/

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - https://shlom.in/reply .

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