Subject: Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 29 Sep 2002 02:28:24 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3242255304507299@naggum.no> * Tim Josling | XML is an encoding format, no more than that. You may find it illuminating to do a web search on my name and SGML. | It is a pretty good encoding format because it is relatively simple and | semi-human-readable, though verbose. Compare with the alteratives - ad hoc | binary formats or the IEEE's binary format monstrosity whose name I forget. As long as you actually believe that such are the alternatives, yes, XML is better than the completely braindamaged. However, if you start to think about the problem, XML starts to become an idiotic non-solution that only creates more problems than it solves. It has all the disadvantages of an ad hoc binary format, and none of the benefits -- namely compactness and version sensitivity. I am actually flabbergasted that anyone reading comp.lang.lisp would /not/ understand how to make something better than XML and even carp on this "ad-hoc binary format" non-argument. You /do/ realize that Common Lisp offers a ready-made data syntax, as well, do you not? | But it is not a content model. It does not try to be a content model. It | does not define what any/every tag means. You have to define the content | model. Sometimes the tag name gives you an idea what the field means. Again, do a quick search for the SGML bibliography. You may find that you have embarrassed yourself, but if you have any new arguments that I have not heard in the past 12 years, please feel free to present them after you have familiarized yourself with what I have done in the SGML arena. | You can't blame this on XML. I can, and I do. Languages come with philosophies from which they cannot be separated. The XML philosphy is stale, stupid, and counter-productive relative to its own stated goals, among which the most important was supposed to be the independence of data from the application, which is actually worse with XML than even /your/ "alternatives". -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I would retain from the offers in the more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.