Re: [Tclxml-users] How to generate an XML document using TCL

[Philip E. <pe...@li...>]

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 	> 	The internal format has nice things like this:
> 	> 
> 	> 	(line has been wrapped)
> 	> 
> 	> 	<int_4s compression='9' format='base64' name='my_data'
> 	> 	        comment='this is my data'> ... </int_4s>
> 	> 
> 	> 	So, I guess XML is to prevent us from writing non-portable
> 	> 	but more readable formats.  But I, for one, think maybe
> 	> 	it's got a bit out of hand.
> 	> 			.
> 	> 			.
> 	> 			.
> 	> I, for a second, sure can't figure out some
> 	> of the marketing perpetrated on XML's behalf.
> 	> 
> 	> Back to technical matters:  Phil, I don't
> 	> understand of what the above is an example.
> 	> Why can't it be XML?
> 
> 	It is an example of a format that anybody involved in processing
> 	numerical data can intuitively understand.  The myth about XML is
> 	that it is immediately interpretable by some magical interpreter,
> 	and no magical interpreter will interpret the above example.
> 
> 	QOTW?
> 			.
> 			.
> 			.
> Sure.
> 
> The fragment above:  it *can* be well-formed XML, right?
> I still don't get your claim that your group invented a
> syntax which is not XML.  I understand that to mean there's
> some syntax which violates XML, but which your group finds
> better-than-XML.  What's an example of that?

Because there is no DTD.  It is XML-like, but XML is just
HTML-like, which is just like something else, etc.  I guess
it is nice to latch on to something and to say it can be
all things to all people, but other than Tcl, I have yet to
see any such thing.  The XML people here screamed bloody
murder about the "internal lightweight format" because
their visual interpreter could not color syntaxify it.