Re: identifiers and modules

Marco Antoniotti wrote: 
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:

Ray Blaak wrote:

XML is great if used in small doses. When its full schema bullshit is used it
is an abomination, and example of computer geeks doing a giant community brain
fart, without even realizing it, and without recognizing how much more time
and effort is now wasted.

It is complete masturbation.

That might be the best characterization of XML I've read so far. Thanks. :)

XML is S-expressions in a drag :)

From http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/topics/xml.html#xml-essence ("The Essence of XML"):

"XML is touted as an external format for representing data. This is not a hard problem. All we require are two properties:

* Self-describing: From the external representation one should be able to derive the corresponding internal representation.

* Round-tripping: If one converts from an internal representation to the external representation and back again, the new internal representation should equal the old.

Lisp S-expressions, for example, possess these properties.

XML has neither property. It is not always self-describing, since the internal format corresponding to an external XML description depends crucially on the XML Schema that is used for validation (for instance, to tell whether data is an integer or a string). And it is not always round-tripping, since some pathological Schemas lack this property (for instance, if there is a type union of integers and strings). So the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well."


Pascal

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