Re: XML and its uses

Zamdrist wrote:
Joseph Kesselman wrote:

XML is a standard for writing standards for portable data interchange
representations. It's a substiset of SGML, which had previously been
used for that purpose (though primarily in the document markup arena.)
XML has turned out to be remarkably useful as a framework around which
to build domain-independent data manipulations.

Forgive me but, while that all sounds good, what practical, everyday
application does what you describe have?

It lets me write documents which can then be published or reused in many different formats without me having to maintain multiple parallel versions; and to know that what I'm writing is in a file format that will outlast both the software and myself. But that's because I write a lot, and it saves me time, money, and effort.

In the legal field, I suspect people who actually do the writing are not really concerned about whether their documents can be reused later or not, nor about whether they will be long-lived. All they want is a pretty interface, which Microsoft provides. The people who actually have to make legal documents work in the long term are slowly discovering that document formats *designed* to last a long time are Quite A Good Idea.

There are currently *no* XML editors suitable for direct authoring by people who don't know XML (see my paper at Extreme Markup earlier this month). This may well have something to do with why it's not used by authors (except for those who learn what XML is).

We had a fairly significant, nationally based client recently ask us to
send them a report of their data to them, on a regular basis,
intellectual property law based data. They didn't want their data sent
to them in XML format...they wanted it in MS Excel.

That may well be because what you are sending them is not data: it's results (the output of doing something to data). Or that the information is transient or just not very important, and thus not worth preserving (because it can always be regenerated from the original source data). There are many good reasons for not using XML.

You forgot to say "that I'm aware of" -- and you haven't been looking
hard enough. The legal code for the state of Tasmania is now being
maintained in a database system which takes advantage of XML markup, to
take one particularly visible example.

The recent CDs of legal code for Ireland were all produced from XML master copies. No-one in their right mind would ever use anything else for permanent textual information (nor has done since the late 1980s).

Well yes, that I'm aware of. Which is why I explained no one has asked
for their data, or sent me their data in XML format. No one has even
inquired about it. Ever. While we are not the biggest IP firm in the
nation, we are in the top 10 easily.

If they (and you) are happy with using Word/Excel/etc, stay with it. I see no reason to force anyone to use a format they don't need or want. Saving time, money, and effort isn't usually interesting when the cost of training for XML adoption is high, the software is mediocre, and when the nature of the information just doesn't require any of the benefits.

///Peter
--
XML FAQ: http://xml.silmaril.ie/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sane Syntax
    ... vital role in the future of TeX but we need some more human friendly ... Generating well formed LaTeX2e documents from XML ... Another approach is to convert existing documents to XML format and go ... TEI, together with DocBook, are the two ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: XHTML vs HTML
    ... to be the predominant type of HTML used on the web for many years yet. ... First, it is XML. ... XHTML is also ... transformed using XSL from and into virtually *any* other data format. ...
    (microsoft.public.frontpage.programming)
  • Re: text to bibliography?
    ... to xml: you can store binary data in an xml file. ... including your well-formattedbibliography(no longer in xml format). ... It is in annotated bibliographies (something Word 2007 does not ... that %I is actually the field representing the publisher. ...
    (microsoft.public.word.docmanagement)
  • Re: Future of LISP. Alternative to XML. Web 3.0?
    ... using s-expressions instead of XML, nobody is going to use it, ... because it's cheaper to keep the existing XML software and continue ... XML-MAIDEN format or to HTML format and next displayed via standard ... or a CanonML or LISP browser. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Data table text I/O package?
    ... It has bracketing: rows and columns. ... As a medium XML is as awful as readable. ... > tell you not to use an internal type when it suits your application. ... is irrelevant to the data format used. ...
    (comp.lang.ada)