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-Thread: 103376,602331146257f418
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII
Path: 
 g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.banetele.no!news.hacking.dk!pnx.dk!not-for-mail
From: Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Data table text I/O package?
Date: 21 Jun 2005 14:35:19 +0200
Organization: hacking.dk - Doing fun stuff with open source
Sender: sparre@hugin.crs4.it
Message-ID: <m264w7ga60.fsf@hugin.crs4.it>
References: <m2psuodjsz.fsf@hugin.crs4.it>
 <mailman.35.1118835822.17633.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>
 <m2ll5beoaj.fsf@hugin.crs4.it>
 <mailman.36.1118844777.17633.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>
 <m2hdfzek8i.fsf@hugin.crs4.it> <bcqdncc6ba5A5C3fRVn-sQ@megapath.net>
 <m2k6ku8w2s.fsf@hugin.crs4.it>
 <mailman.50.1118919277.17633.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>
 <42b169a6$0$27776$9b4e6d93@newsread2.arcor-online.net>
 <8j219bkiemjq$.1mmc0sh5a5yfi$.dlg@40tude.net>
 <42b17420$0$1141$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net>
 <24xw0b1odenq.mogaaz1unwv0.dlg@40tude.net>
 <42b6a64f$0$1132$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net>
 <1in4nty16vspl$.1cicehrmojyok$.dlg@40tude.net>
 <42b70a06$0$27782$9b4e6d93@newsread2.arcor-online.net>
 <1u56bhsve8jaq$.1jaobcwbltsz1$.dlg@40tude.net>
 <42b7dccb$0$1138$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net>
 <m2fyvcf354.fsf@hugin.crs4.it>
 <42b7f58e$0$1134$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hugin.crs4.it
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: xyzzy.adsl.dk 1119357629 2926 156.148.71.67 (21 Jun 2005 12:40:29
 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.hacking.dk
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:40:29 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.4
Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11528
Date: 2005-06-21T14:35:19+02:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:

> > Unlike Ada, XML is _not_ human-readable.
> 
> First, this has been claimed many times without even an indication
> of why this might be so. Again, compare
> 
>   <Date year = "2006" month = "December" day = "24"/>
> 
> and
> 
>   Date'(year => 2006, month => -"December", day => 24);
> 
> Could it be that you just don't like reading angle brackets?

I definitely don't like reading _any_ brackets, when I'm looking at
data.

> Do the <...> smell like C++'s template parameter brackets?

They may.  But neither of the above two notations are sensible, when I
am playing with 30 � 55k matrices.

> Again, habits? I won't say that XML *looks* nice, but it's purpose
> is not to look nice, this is not a Miss Dataformat Competition where
> you cannot win without rounded curves o.K. by the lates fashion.
> XML is supposed to support identifing data in text form.

Yes.  But for tabular data XML has much too much overhead and is thus
too difficult to read.

> > And if I want an error-correcting file format which isn't
> > human-readable, there are plenty to choose from, which are faster than
> > XML.
> 
> Such as...?
> ASN.1 perhaps?

I am not sure if ASN.1 includes error-correction, but it was one of
the options I had on my mind, when I wrote the sentence.  A much more
effective format would be based on an instantiation of Ada.Direct_IO
with some kind of checksum included in Element_Type.  My astrophysics
colleagues also have a nice format for multidimensional tables, but I
can't remember the name at the moment.

Jacob
-- 
                      CAUTION
               BLADE EXTREMELY SHARP
                KEEP OUT OF CHILDREN