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Re: Why XML is perferable

2001-02-22 21:30:03
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:43:02 CST, jag(_at_)kw(_dot_)com(_dot_)cn (Jun'an Gao)  
said:
Assumption:

Total Comprehensiveness of RFCs
 = SIGMA { <interest on RFC#i of reader#j>
         * <familiarity on the presentation format of RFC#i of reader#j>
         }

Notice that the second term evaluates to:

1 if you can display it effectively.
0 if you can't display it effectively.

Now, if you're willing to give us a pointer *TODAY* to software
that will run on *every* major internet-capable platform, and do a
good-enough job of rendering XML in such a way that it is *more*
understandable than flat-ascii on *all* those platforms, then we'll
talk.

Remember that your XML displayer has to work on a PalmPilot, an
IBM3278 (24x80 text-only monitor) driven by IBM's MVS operating
system (EBCDIC-based, no less), and a DecWriter dot-matrix printer/terminal.
I've personally read ASCII-based RFCs on all those.  Oh, and you
have to be able to show value-added - that it does a BETTER job
than ASCII on those 3 devices, as well as everything else....

Repeat after me:

Everybody can display ASCII.  Until everybody can display XML, we won't
be using XML for the canonical form for RFCs.  This is *different* than
what Marshall Rose did in RFC2629 - note that that document is itself
*flat ascii* describing how to write XML and *then convert it to create
a flat ascii RFC*.

                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech



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