In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
'XML became terrible for all jobs' ... you do realize that there are literally hundreds of billions of xml encoded documents out there, happily doing what they are supposed to do ... not trolling; but lets put some of the comments in context for what they are. XML in its original role of extensible markup is thriving and completely successful ... as I previously mentioned, I am glad we are not slinging around angle b…
The lack of user-defined tags and attributes (ignoring data-* for a minute because it's different) is what makes HTML such a more pleasant document/markup language than XML. XML schemas are hard because allowing people to define an ad-hoc ordered hierarchical parsing structure is hard, so most people don't do the schema part (or ignore the schema in the real world) resulting in ambiguity in the rules about what sort…
the lack of being able to extend or define my own tags and attributes feels like a reduction in freedom to me ... but I guess it depends on your perspective. If you feel comfortable with browser companies and a small handful of ppl defining a rigid vocabulary for the world to use, that is your option; me ... I don't feel comfortable with that situation.
XML schemas are hard ... the xml suite of technologies certainly did not get it right the first time around, but slowly those 'hard' technoloiges get eaiser to use (either because of tooling or in XML Schema case we now have v1.1 with things like assertions that make validation a lot more useful and easier). In the meantime, I am certain that we will see every XML technology eventually will get regenerated and replicated within the JSON stack of tech.
Lastly, I agree that having a sanctioned vocabulary called HTML5 is a 'good thing' ... however saying that the world only needs one markup format is plainly incorrect, its akin to saying we only need a single spoken language; sure a lingua franca would make life (and processes) a magnitude simpler but hoping for this situation to actually occur is a real 'pipe' dream.
IMO, if a 'fallacies of data' type edict was to be handed down, then 'planning for homogeneity (lingu franca)' would be in the top 7.
Re: In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
'XML became terrible for all jobs' ... you do realize that there are literally hundreds of billions of xml encoded documents out there, happily doing what they are supposed to do ... not trolling; but lets put some of the comments in context for what they are. XML in its original role of extensible markup is thriving and completely successful ... as I previously mentioned, I am glad we are not slinging around angle b…
'XML became terrible for all jobs' ... you do realize that there are literally hundreds of billions of xml encoded documents out there, happily doing what they are supposed to do ... not trolling; but lets put some of the comments in context for what they are. I sure do. I perhaps should have conceded that once you get up to the level of Large Enterprise Monstrosities (LEMs), you have something almost by definition "…
hehe, I like the denotation LEMs ...
Re: In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
* Infrastructure (schema support - DTD, Schema, RelaxNG; transformation - XSLT) * No obvious document format (What encoding are the strings? How to escape characters? * Only used to describe predefined object types (boolean, strings, arrays, dictionaries * Hard to ensure the integrity of the data without interpreting the data from the interpreter itself (no external validation)
You know this can be done on top when you have demand for this? I prefer a non-bloated protocol format over XML anytime. How often does the DTD not matter at all ? How often is the encoding fixed by convention ? ...
I use schemas (in the form of RelaxNG most of the time) almost every time I deal with XML. Together with schematron you can make very complex lint-like scripts to verify your data. Actually I program in XML with a self created programming language (formulated in XML). This together with RelaxNG and a good XML makes it fun writing XML and absolutely (syntax-)error free.
Re: In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yaml is not good for configuration files because it is not easily human-editable. It seems "easy" but meaningful whitespace is a cluster-f ck . Edit: I have been looking for reasonable configuration file formats for a while. Json actually has pretty bad human-readability at any scale because of its quoted key-values. Yaml is easily readable but when a user tries to change anything, things go to hell. The humble ini-f…
It seems "easy" but meaningful whitespace is a cluster-fck. Tell that to everyone using Python. If your editor can't handle meaningful whitespace transparently, it sounds like you need a better editor.
you need a better editor
I think you misunderstand the concept of "configuration file". These are not intended for programmers but for users of the program you write.
White complaints about Pythons' meaningful white are still common, programmers can get over that by, indeed, getting a better editor or otherwise wrapping their head around the situation.
But end-users can't be expected to have this kind of sophistication. Explaining to someone while things they can't see have made their program usable is no fun.
Re: In Defense of COS, or Why I Love JSON and Hate XML
#46http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Devtools/parable-of-the-languages....
I love how some technologies cause some folks to get hostile ... HTML and XML are very close cousins in the same markup family.
On the basis of correct usage (e.g. not insane application of XML to corner cases) I don't fully understand the logic of people who profess love for HTML and hatred of XML, they are in the same family. The only difference is that HTML (now)is a controlled vocabulary, eventually folks will want to add markup of their own design w/o committee discussing the merits.
Perhaps next decade ;)