On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 ben@morrow.me.uk wrote:
Rather, my question is, why are you using XML rather than (say) some format based on short-lines-of- ASCII (perhaps taking RFC2822 as your model)? Given that the data to be represented is pure ascii, and has a very simple structure, do you really need all the complexities of XML?
OK that's a fair and good question... Several things makes us go for XML. First, it's an Internet thing we wanna do, so if we were just writing "the most simple hexdump standard" the place to do it would probably be IEEE and not IETF. Such de facto-standards (like S-records) already exist. We expect the need for transport of this kind of data to increase, so an IETF RFC is needed. There is a general trend i Unix and other OS:es to in addition to being textual, also be XML. Also, if we should not go for XML, then the same line of reasoning about simplicity would also go for BEEP and others, yes? These RFCs give me the impression that textual transport should be made in XML where possible, not only where complexity is above some certain level. (Correct med if this is wrong.) Perhaps the most important point raised was that if we need to extend this format, e.g. replace it with an SHF v.2 at some point (if not before, then as 128bit computing is introduced sooner or later), XML is easy to extend, version and add structure in, if desired. When complexity increase, XML scales fine. Yours, Linus Walleij