XML quote Re: Meeting Notes: SLUG Mon 14 Nov - Google Earth and everything else

[Thomas Charron]

On 11/14/06, aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net <aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net>
wrote:
>
> > From: kclark at elbrysnetworks.com (Kevin D. Clark)
> > Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:30:12 -0500
> > Now suppose in version 2 of the protocol we want to add some more
> > properties:
> >    <foo>
> >    <color>blue</color>
> >    <height>1.3m</height>
> >    <fav-dessert>pie</fav-dessert>
> >    <weight>22kg</weight>
> >    <fav-movie>Brazil</fav-movie>
> >    </foo>
> That's great, but when v3 of the protocol comes out, and the message
> is encoded
>     <foo>
>     <color>blue</color>
>     <height>1.3m</height>
>     <favorites>
>      <dessert>pie</dessert>
>      <movie>Brazil</movie>
>     </favorites>
>     <weight>22kg</weight>
>     </foo>
> your v1 and v2 nodes are going to be incompatible with your v3 nodes.


    Then you did it wrong in the first place.  Now, the benny of XML is you
would utilize namespaces to provide versioning and you could encode both
formats within one.  Occasionally, you have to duplicate information becouse
the initial definition wasn't very extendable.  But that's a new format.

    It's all great and good that I could very well rename 'foo' to 'bar',
but..  Why?  ;-)

On the other hand, if the communication protocol was formed solely of
> grammatical Lojban text, this problem would never happen:
>
> la fus. se skari lo blanu
>          gi'e mitre li papici loka clani
>          gi'e rainei lo bavyvacysai poi se cmene zoi gy. pie .gy. ku'o
>                   .e lo skina poi se cmene zoi gy. Brazil .gy. ku'o
>          gi'e ki'ogra li rere
>
> Easy as that.  :) The text will parse into a tree just like XML, but
> with the advantage that standard rewriting rules can be used to
> convert between different *representations* with the same *meaning*.
> Hm.  Sounds like one of the original goals of SGML, doesn't it?


    ....

    That looks like french poetry to me.

    Thomas
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