From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F2F5BBAF for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:31:07 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AhMDAJAq00jAXQIniGdsb2JhbACTLQEBAQ8gpS6BZQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.32,429,1217800800"; d="scan'208";a="17496836" Received: from concorde.inria.fr ([192.93.2.39]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 19 Sep 2008 13:31:07 +0200 Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m8JBV20o024307 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=OK) for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:31:07 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqQEABsq00jY8SQNamdsb2JhbACTLQ0FCAYSpTCBZQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.32,429,1217800800"; d="scan'208";a="15132191" Received: from unknown (HELO mzpi4.forethought.net) ([216.241.36.13]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA; 19 Sep 2008 13:31:06 +0200 Received: from [216.241.35.41] (helo=[10.0.0.2]) by mz2.forethought.net with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KgeCN-0002fu-C1 for caml-list@inria.fr; Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:30:55 -0600 Message-ID: <48D38D6B.9050404@gushee.net> Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:30:51 -0600 From: Matt Gushee User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080522) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] XML library for validating MathML References: <103293.54569.qm@web54606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <20080918083853.GA15219@snarc.org> <9d3ec8300809180212r7e3dcdf3wd13c5cff69d5034b@mail.gmail.com> <1221738727.17456.27.camel@flake.lan.gerd-stolpmann.de> In-Reply-To: <1221738727.17456.27.camel@flake.lan.gerd-stolpmann.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 48D38D76.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; gerd:01 gerd:01 stolpmann:01 white-space:98 amid:98 imho:01 wrote:01 caml-list:01 century:98 data:02 groups:02 python:03 tend:03 library:03 e-commerce:95 If you'll forgive the slight off-topic-ness ... I spent a couple of years as an XML consultant. Got out of the business partly for the kinds of reasons Gerd cites. Anyway, just a couple of quick comments: Gerd Stolpmann wrote: > Thanks. Initially, I thought XML is an easy format - because it looks > easy. But the specs are really challenging - full of bad compromises, > and I would expect that a widely adopted standard has to undergo some > evaluation of its practicability before it is published. Well, yes, one would expect that. Two factors to consider are that: 1) XML is descended from SGML--which was horribly difficult to implement (hey, it was invented at IBM and used by the US Dept of Defense, so what do you expect?). Compared to full SGML, XML is very simple. 2) The process of developing W3C specs (technically they're not "standards," though I'm not sure that really matters to anyone) is vendor-driven, hence highly politicized. I mean, put Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc. together in the same room--need I say more? Whereas the IETF groups that develop RFCs, for example, are more of a technical meritocracy, something like the Open Source software community. So it should be no surprise that RFCs tend to have fairly good technical foundations (HTTP, anyone?) while many of the W3C specs are just hideous. 3) Regarding the white-space problem, I think the design may have been influenced (rightly or wrongly) by notions about white space being helpful for human readers ... somewhat like Python with its indentation-based code blocks. > There is much more to say about shortcomings in XML, or the XML > standardization process. It is now an unnecessary complicated > technology. I would advise everybody to use it only when there is no way > around it, e.g. for exchange of structured data between organizations. And it's really not optimal for that, it's just a widely-adopted lowest common denominator. But bear in mind that XML was originally intended for structured *documents*; it got hijacked for other purposes amid all the e-commerce hype around the turn of the century. Some of the XML-based document formats (DocBook? SVG?) are, IMHO, not such bad compromises if you consider the known alternatives. -- Matt Gushee : Bantam - lightweight file manager : matt.gushee.net/software/bantam/ : : RASCL's A Simple Configuration Language : matt.gushee.net/rascl/ :