Re: Should Inline be private in the private part of a package spec?

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 23.08.12 10:38, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

>> I said that since there are multiple different source (Excel, PDF, ...)
>> I need *more* parsing.
>
> Wrong. That depends on what parsing the involved sources require.

Here is the effort, per document:

  XML1 * Parsing_Effort (XML1)
   + XML2 * Parsing_Effort (XML2)
   + XML3 * Parsing_Effort (XML3)

vs

  Excel * Parsing_Effort (Excel)
   + PDF * Parsing_Effort (PDF)
   + ... * Parsing_Effort (...)

If you have had the pleasure of parsing a man made Excel or PDF file,
you know the result of the comparison. One could of course
throw a couple of monthly salaries at MS and Adobe and buy all necessary
versions of Excel and Acrobat and all necessary development tools
(if available at all) just to get at those cells of the data sheets,
hoping that results will be produced in time.

>> If all sources use XML, the variety of parsers is reduced.
>
> I don't need parsers to exchange data: P1 = 0.

Fine. Most people will need some parsing in their networks.


> He proposed XML for exchanging structured data. You already agreed in this
> thread that XML would be a poor performer there.

If XML means sending less information per second, then still understanding
the information in XML documents can be *much* faster and require *less*
development time.
These timings matter much more in a market for software that does
not take years to design and does not run for decades.


>> in the real, non-standard
>> world that some of us live in, we would not even enjoy the luxury of a
>> known file format such as Excel or PDF.
>
> In the real non-standard world there are requirements imposed on the
> application and there are solutions and decisions you are free to make.

Requirement: find the information before it becomes obsolete.
Choice: write a parser, or parse manually, whichever is quicker.
Imposed conditions: documents exist, as-is, in the network.

> The point is straight and simple: when you are free to choose never ever
> use XML. There is no technical reason to choose XML.

For weeks now I have been trying to explain that in my networks,
there is no plural "you". There are multiple "we"s. They do *not*
agree. Everyone sends what they think is the right choice. Period.
In *this* kind of network, XML is a relief.