Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1

#111

Post by namedgraph » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #70

aravindet wrote: post #25

For those replying with "XML is bad and therefore Google is right", reading the whole thread presents a more complex picture. Quoting from various comments in that thread, > this is a proposal for querying the HTML DOM with XPath, not XML. > Per https://www.chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/popularity it does seem that about 1-2% of page views end up using XPath One could argue whether a feature that has existed for o…

> One could argue whether a feature that has existed for over a decade and is only used by 1-2% of page views is worth improving, but that is not the argument that domenic is making here. > It's interesting that these refer only to the implementation cost to Google, and does not make any reference to costs or benefits to other users of the web platform, which are discussed by other comments. A few months back Chrome…

They are what Joel Spolsky called "architecture astronauts".

Re: Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1

#112

Post by namedgraph » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

barefootliam wrote: post #75

richx wrote: post #56

The European Securities and Exchange Commission (ESMA) has just now mandated all listed companies in the EU to publish their annual financial statements in XHTML instead of PDF or paper. Combined with XBRL taxonomies it’s a very powerful structured format. Please don’t forget that XML is widespread in business applications and I haven’t seen any similar powerful replacement for XML validation and XPath. Please let me…

There isn't an alternative, largely i think because XML people come at the problem from the idea that documents are primary, not just artifacts of programs.

Data-driven architecture is the future. Data has to be driving the software, not the way around.

Re: Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1

#113

Post by namedgraph » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

barefootliam wrote: post #82

richx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an attack vector? Can you elaborate further?

No. XML libraries increase the attack _surface_, but XML itself is passive. There was a famous "billion laughs" attack, but JavaScript was also vulnerable to this, as is any language that lets you concatenate strings. The usual fix is a max size on such strings. There are a couple of other potential vulnerabilities, such as the ability to access the content of any URL, including file://etc/group, but again JavaScript…

Exactly

Re: Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1

#114

Post by namedgraph » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #98

netfl0 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t tell if this was a serious response, I am not trying to pull your leg.

It’s a very serious response. XML is a defective technology that has no place in the modern web. Perhaps the only successful bit is SVG, for lack of a better alternative. MathML is a failure — katex and mathjax do a fundamentally better job of rendering mathematics on the web — and are based on what people who write a lot of math actually use: tex and friends. If you need to interpret XML documents as HTML, use some…

Dude you're delusional. The web only succeeded because it was built on declarative tech, and JS is an the opposite of that.

Don't mix the WS-* trash with XPath/XSLT -- still the only standard data transformation technology. Last I check the JSON folks were still trying to reinvent XML schema? The JSON stack has nothing on XML in terms of maturity and features.