[Gllug] Best format, for everyone, for saving documents.

Doug Winter doug at pigeonhold.com
Mon Jun 16 08:18:36 UTC 2003


On Mon 16 Jun Tethys wrote:
> This PNG file format exposes useful metadata about the contents of the
> file. All the compressed XML can tell you is that it's compressed. A much
> better idea would be to use a chunked file format, with a header chunk
> containing details about the type of file, and then a data chunk, which
> could contain compressed XML.

Apart from any of that, XML is just unnecessarily prolix.  The reason
for this is the initial design choice that it be compatible with SGML,
which was very syntax heavy itself.

That, obviously, is a design decision that is completely unrelated to
most of the applications for which XML is chosen, so it's not surprising
that it's not ideal.  

This isn't to say it doesn't have benefits - for a lot of business
applications the quality of design is very poor, so *any* generic format
with decent support is better than the nonsense that would otherwise be
used.

XML's tolerance for change is also a great advantage, and one where
people get real benefits - again, rolling your own formats with these
kind of attributes isn't necessarily difficult but it's not something
everyone considers.

doug

-- 
It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't
remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth. -- George Burns
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