Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
XML is the new ASCII. It will win in the end
Once again the simple question: How do you express CIDR with
XML ? XML is not "the new ASCII". It's a simplification of
SGML, because browsers / parsers / humans were too stupid to
handle SGML correctly. XML is for the structure of (large)
documents. And it's really good or at least good enough for
this purpose, parsing XML is easy.
The problem was not in the parsers, the problem was in SGML.
SGML is not so much a specification as a description of a
single program. A lot of the 'design' features of SGML are
not really much more than cute hacks the program was capable of.
Likewise SGML has a whole rack of arbitrary restrictions that
are due to the original code having fixed data tables.
But "the structure of documents" is not the same as "any data
structure". AFAIK there are no "numbers" in XML. And without
numbers there are no IPs. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
There are several numeric formats. You just have to use the
schema to describe your data structure not the obsolete DTD
junk held over from SGML.
We did not use SGML in the Web because any of us liked it.
In fact I can't recall anyone saying that they ever thought
SGML good except the folk who came from the SGML world.
We used SGML for the same reason that MARID is using XML,
becuase it obtained buy-in from a key constituency that
helped deployment.