From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,55958fd991db66fe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-09-12 14:37:28 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D810590.1090300@cogeco.ca> From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Advantage of XML based GUI? (was Re: Ada-inspired OS/Language) References: <3D7CA9E3.51C3015A@acm.org> <3D7F71E0.2070309@cogeco.ca> <3D80C422.3080402@cogeco.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 17:22:24 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.47.195 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1031865742 198.96.47.195 (Thu, 12 Sep 2002 17:22:22 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 17:22:22 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28887 Date: 2002-09-12T17:22:24-04:00 List-Id: Georg Bauhaus wrote: > Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote: > : you still boil > : down to conventions and data format. > > Sure, and in a sense, an Ada program is just a string > that is in accordance with some grammar, that is > acceepted by some machinery. :-) That is, all this gossip > about the safe programming language Ada boils down > to accepted/not accepted, right? I don't want to get drawn into this, so I'll just focus on the XML topic at hand.. ;-) > Besides, is there a convention based data format similar > to XML based formats that provides for builtin referential > integrity (like via IDREF?)? One that has well defined > inclusion and reuse mechanisms? One that allows renaming > of values? It doesn't matter how wonderful the XML format/standard/convention is. To me (at least), it is _just_ a data format with a standard. :-) > I'm not convinced that calling a BNF like thing (and more) > mere convention is really appropriate. I'm not sure why this is being raised. The original point was calling an O/S something to do with XML, or to put "XML" in the name because of its present "hype". I say, "why do that?" because it is just a data format. Is it really going to revolutionize the O/S we are talking about? I guess what I am saying is "not everyone is as hyped about XML as maybe you are." Is that a fair statement to make? > : Beyond that, you are just talking about tools that > : work with XML. > > Well, yes and no (certainly no, actually). There is a notion > of a conforming XML system, and you can't just specify document > types or even be done with wellformedness and then use, say > pattern based text extraction and say, "we are doing XML based > data processing". At least you'll be missing something then :-) But _any_ "data format" has a concept of "wellformedness". This is not unique to XML. > As a side note, why are these standard lectures called > "algorithms _and_ data structures"? Where does the algorithm come in? Maybe a poor choice in title? > There is even data > driven programming, so a decent data format, and means > of securely specifying it, is crucial, I think. Every program reacts to the input data it is given (ie. data driven). In fact, in addition to the text and bss regions, every program has a "data" region. Sounds like a data driven process to me ;-) . So I fail to see how XML is "new" in this regard or in this role. It still just represents plain old data in a new wrapper. > I'll concede that XML text doesn't look pretty or elegant, but > text with XML markup in it is really useful, I never said it wasn't useful. ;-) > for example > when debugging data streams, due to being explicit. How do you define "explicit" that is different from any other data format? Isn't any defined format "explicit"? I don't see XML being special in this regard. It is still just a data format ;-) -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg