At 12:12 AM +1100 on 11/1/99, Julian Blackhirst wrote:
ike OpenKard as you would never see the markup anyway.
>
>Uli Kusterer:
>> But everything has its uses. I'm sure we can later provide export to and
>>import from XCML files, since it's good as a transfer format, but
>>ineffective as a work-and-edit format if it's not a human but a machine
>>manipulating the files.
>
>Julian:
>Thats a good idea,....
WARNING: RANT FOLLOWS
Why would we want XML? Really? What advantage does XML -- or an export to
XML -- offer?
The ability to use a text editor to f-up your stacks? Do actually intend to
edit your stacks by hand with all the thousands of lines of machine
generated garbage to deal with? And manage not to make a single mistake,
like creating duplicate or invalid part numbers or ID's? Why not just use
the graphical editor? There are some good arguments as to why with HTML:
The graphical editors produce code that is bloated, and don't let you do
everything you should be able to do with HTML -- at least not easily. But
do we intend to bark up the same tree, and create a format so complex as
that even our own code can't edit it?
One might argue that XML allows other people to use our format and create
their own viewers & editors, but--um--coudn't the just use the binary
format, since it's public? And aren't binary formats easier--and
quicker--for a computer to deal with?
And why can't you transfer binary formats? You might have to do some endian
conversions, but--really--that's not so bad. I mean, really, it's SO HARD
to swap a few little bytes, as I don't know of anyone who uses a different
integer format. As for floating point formats, most of the world is
IEEE-standard now; those that are not will need converting. And if you
think those are hard to do, just think of character set conversions for XML.
Is this some great percentage of the press and public, posessed with
buzzwords, driving this technically meritless trend? Have I missed some
great elightenment? Or should I just go back to bed?
END RANT
