[Gllug] Getting Linux to work with Freeserve (Wanadoo) Broadband

[Bruce Richardson]

On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 01:42:17PM +0100, Tethys wrote:
> 
> Bruce Richardson writes:
> 
> >That's all you need to know for most XML work.  It really is not hard.
> 
> Yes, it is. If I, as a lifelong geek, can't remember the mystic runes
> that XML requires at the top of each document, then what hope has the
> general public got?

Did you buy those credentials on the Internet?  I hear there's a good
money to be made that way.  Can you not just copy and paste?  Or write a
wee script that just makes a new document from a template?  Or just
re-use old documents?

> With other documentation systems, you can at least
> just sit down at start writing, without worrying about your document
> being rejected as invalid.

Funnily enough, when I just sit down to write a document in XML, I don't
worry about it being invalide.  I write it, I run it through a parser, I
correct the mistakes that the parser finds and I move on.

Of course, the nice thing about XML is that the parser can find the
errors easily and usually point you at just the right part of the
document.  The sloppiness of HTML, in contrast, means that many errors
are very difficult to pin down.  Many errors, in fact, aren't errors at
all, just things that will generate unpredictable results in the
browser.

The whole point about XML is that it's for structured data.  If your
data has no structure, don't use XML.  If it does, then something that
will detect errors in the structure is an aid to productivity, not an
obstacle.  Humans generate structured data all the time: articles,
reports, CVs.

> 
> Yes, apparently you do. As far as I can see, XML has few advantages,
> and many downsides. For low bandwidth data interchange between
> automated systems, then yes, XML probably has its place. For anything
> manually written (or read, for that matter) by a human, it's just a
> nightmare.

That's just hysteria.  Way over the top.  I know that XML has been
over-hyped and some people push it in areas where it isn't appropriate,
but "nightmare"?  I had to rewrite my CV recently, so I decided to do it
in XML, so that I could quickly convert it to whatever format an
employer might request.  So I found the XML RÃsumà DTD, read the
documentation, wrote it.  Took a day.  Nightmare?  Hmm.  Maybe you're
referring to the way the DTD would let me associate some of the data in
the CV with different targets, so that I could easily produce
appropriately weighted documents for different kinds of employers.  Yup,
that one certainly keeps me awake at night.

XML isn't perfect (some annoying design decisions in there), nor is it
appropriate for every occasion.  But it can be a damn useful tool for
much more than automated data interchange.

-- 
Bruce

I am now a little wary of bananas.
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