Re: XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable preferences library

[J C L. <cl...@ka...>]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 23:14:17 -0500 
Brian Hook <ho...@py...> wrote:

> So here's a question -- I know that whenever a discussion about text
> file formats comes up there is often a "use XML" grenade tossed into
> it.  Now, I can think of a lot of reasons NOT to use XML (i.e. it's
> overkill, for one), but I'm curious what real, tangible reasons for
> using XML exist, as opposed to a simple application specific structure
> (like INI files).

-- Generic off-the-shelf known-working/correct parser.

-- Generic off-the-shelf correctness/validity known working/correct
checking (mostly, modulo DTD details etc).

-- Able to represent complex nested/recursive structures.

-- Able to standardly represent simple/small and large/complex types (eg
basic types and large data blobs).

-- Relatively easily processed and viewed/edited by other tools.

-- Can safely/accurately refer to data objects stored externally to the
dataset (eg MIME objects in-file or fully external).

-- Relatively mature toolchain.

-- Relatively familiar to potential employees and their preferred
toolchains.

It is however a very large hammer for what is usually a very small nut.
It also has the variously massive disadvantages of not being
particularly human readable and of working poorly with standard text
processing tools (eg grep/sed/perl/cut/etc).

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
cl...@ka...               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.