spf-discuss
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Re: considering XML

2004-01-21 23:32:34
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 02:09:49PM -0500, Meng Weng Wong wrote:

| On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 01:53:07PM -0500, George Schlossnagle wrote:
| | IMHO 'human-readable' data formats are over-rated when their 
| | consumers are all automated processes.
| 
| That's actually an argument in favour of XML.
| 
| It's easier for machines to read, because we already have XML libraries
| and a toolkit.
| 
| SPF is easier for humans to write but at the end of the day most people
| are still using a wizard.
| 
|              SPF                           XML
| 
|   easy for lay people to write      slightly harder for lay people to writep
|   easy for XML nerds to write       very easy for XML nerds to write
|   new parsers have to be written    parsers kind of already written
|   less extensible                   theoretically more extensible

    not much to write                 lots to write
    not much to send                  lots to send
    very easy for SPF nerds to write  very hard for SPF nerds to write
    very lightweight parsers          very heavyweight parsers
    parser developers committed       parsers are too complex and buggy
    extensions carefully vetted       extensions too free wheeling


| thoughts?

You already know my thoughts on XML.

A while way back before the current SPF design was in place I lobbied for a
very simple design.  What we have now is a bit more complex than I like, but
I think it is a good design anyway and will do well as is.  Extensions can
simply be new mechanism names (although I don't know what logic should take
place if the client doesn't recognize the new mechanism, unless they must be
done only in a new version).

-- 
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| Phil Howard KA9WGN       | http://linuxhomepage.com/      http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/   http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
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