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Re: What does it mean to say that XML was over-engineered?

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2021 07:02:42 -0400

XML has had parts rattling around from the beginning despite the best efforts of its creators.

Then we piled more and more parts on it.

Markup doesn't need that much work.

Thanks,
Simon

Also: unparsed entities, notations.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 4:10 PM Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:

By over-engineered I mean that it has more functionality than most applications require.

Things like DTDs, namespaces, processing instructions, which add substantial complexity to applications and APIs whether you use them or not.

Mirriam-Webster definition:

overengineer: to engineer (something, such as a product) to have more functions, capabilities, etc. than are necessary or desirable

Michael Kay
Saxonica

> On 14 Sep 2021, at 23:49, Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
> Michael Kay wrote:
>
>> Given that XML is over-engineered for many of the tasks
>> that people were using it for, other standards better suited
>> to a subset of those tasks were always going to emerge.
>
> What does that mean, "over-engineered"? Does it mean, "too restrictive"? For example, XML does not allow two attributes with the same name to occur on an element. XML requires every start tag to have a matching end tag. Those are kind of restrictive. Is that what you mean by over-engineered? Or do you mean something else?
>
> /Roger
>
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• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: What does it mean to say that XML was over-engineered?
    • From: Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>

• References:
  • What does it mean to say that XML was over-engineered?
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: What does it mean to say that XML was over-engineered?
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
  • Re: What does it mean to say that XML was over-engineered?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>