Bengt Richter wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:04:10 -0600, "A.M. Kuchling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:30:47 +0100, rm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Nowadays, people are trying to create binary XML, XML databases, graphics in XML (btw, I'm quite impressed by SVG), you have XSLT, you have XSL-FO, ... .
Which is an argument in favor of XML -- it's where the activity is, so it's
quite likely you'll encounter the need to know XML. Few projects use YAML,
so the chance of having to know its syntactic details is small.
<rant> I thought XML was a good idea, but IMO requiring quotes around even integer attribute values was an unfortunate decision. I don't buy their rationale of keeping parsing simple -- as if extracting a string with no embedded space from between an equal sign and terminating white space were that much harder than extracting the same delimited by double quotes.
It isn't that much harder, but if there are two ways to do the same thing then effectively one of them has to become a special case, thereby complicating the code that has to handle it (in this case the parser).
"There should be one (and preferably only one) ..." should be a familiar mantra around here :-)
It seems to me the misunderstanding here is that XML was ever intended to be generated directly by typing in a text editor. It was rather intended (unless I'm mistaken) as a process-to-process data interchange metalanguage that would be *human_readable*.The result is cluttering SVG with needless cruft around numerical graphics parameters. </rant>
Tools that *create* XML are perfectly at liberty not to require quotes around integer values.
OTOH, I think the HTML XML spec is very readable, and nicely designed. At least the version 1.0 spec I snagged from W3C a long time ago. .... I see the third edition at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ is differently styled, (I guess new style sheets) but still pretty readable (glancing at it now).
Regards, Bengt Richter
regards Steve -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/ Holden Web LLC +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
