On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Andre Poenitz wrote:
> Right. That's why we have been smart in the beginning and chosen some
> format that can be extended. Like
I agree that XML is the better format for external stuff, like the
document format, configuration files, and such. (My primary motivation for
this view is different: It's interoperability that counts in this
situation.)
However, I don't think XML is a good solution to internal communication,
and that was what we were discussing at that point.
Do you think so?
Greets,
Asger
P.S. For the record: It's trivial to implement version control without
code duplication in XTL. Whether that is a good idea or not is, however,
not obvious. Personally, I think it is a better decision to use code
duplication in this case, because then the code clearly serves as a
specification of all different versions. In the XML scenario, you
also use a set of different DTD's to provide this versioning
information. I.e. you also use code duplication to specify different
versions of the format. (Notice that you can only get away with using
only the latest DTD in the program if the changes are simple
"extensions" of the older format. If you have mayor reworkings of the
format, you will have to use different DTD's in the XML scenario. This is
not so in the XTL scenario. Which solution is better is not easy to
decide without specifying what your exact needs are. In particular, you
can hardly say that one approach in general is monotonously better than
the other.)
