Re: Why Don't 'We' Talk about XML ???

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "PrussianSnow" == PrussianSnow  <1edm@qlink.queensu.ca> writes:

  >> I never said it's not readable.  Just that readability is not the
  >> main concern.  Having a "self-describing" "text" representation
  >> is the main concern.  Readability is pretty secondary.

  PrussianSnow> One thing I do like about XML is that in 5, 10 or even
  PrussianSnow> 50 years when some poor programmer is faced with the
  PrussianSnow> task of reserecting my data as long as she figures out
  PrussianSnow> ASCII she'll probably get the data. This is /very/
  PrussianSnow> important to people like me and that's the level of
  PrussianSnow> readability I'm personally concerned with.


This is not the case. Just because you can read the document does not
mean that you will be able to understand it, which is the hard
bit. In 20 years time, people will have to forensically
reverse-engineer your systems to understand what they do, and what the
data means. And, of course, they could have done this with binary
representation. 

Of course, if you use a standard XML schema which everyone agrees
with, and where the semantics of the schema are well know now, they
probably will be in 20 years also. So your data will be
accessible. But then this is also true with binary data. 

Phil