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From: Woody on 23 Feb 2010 12:16 Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > In article > <1jeddb9.1kgt6ke168ehyxN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > >XML stinks and humans like > >me can't work out what's what inside an XML file. > > The basic syntax of XML is trivial - essentially the same as HTML with > arbitrary element and attribute names, less laxity in quoting, and no > omitting end tags. XML and HTML are both subsets of SGML. SGML (and by its nature, HTML) are horrible to work with. You can't really use either without a DTD. In the case of HTML, the DTD is either specified as one of the public ones or it is implied (by the whim of the browser) and *very* fault tollerant. Real SGML shouldn't be fault tollerant at all (and if HTML hadn't been, life would be a lot easier for a lot of people). XML takes the need for the DTD out at a base level, in that all tags are required and specified with opening and closing tags. You can have a dtd or schema that restricts things beyond that but due to that requirement, it means that you can get usefull information out of the file without one. -- Woody
From: Ben Shimmin on 23 Feb 2010 12:23 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>: > Ben Shimmin <bas(a)llamaselector.com> wrote: >> Geoff Berrow <blthecat(a)ckdog.co.uk>: > [snip] >> The beauty of XML is that you [1] can quite easily write a program >> that will translate it into something else; XSLT (itself XML) is one >> good way of doing this. >> >> It wouldn't be much work to translate iPhoto's library's XML into, say, >> an HTML-based gallery using XSLT. >> >> b. >> >> [1] `you' in the sense of, well, someone like me or Woody, at least. > > Quite - someone who's a highly skilled programmer with decades of > experience behind them on many different platforms, and who finds it > easy to learn-by-inference from the source code. > > None of that applies to almost everyone on the planet. I think we've got side-tracked here. You were talking before about `lock-in' from iPhoto. Woody said there's no lock-in because Apple provide both the original images and some XML for the metadata. If Apple vanished and took iPhoto with them, you could very easily pay someone like me or Woody to work with that XML and produce something useful from it. (Obviously I wouldn't enter into a contract with you for various very obvious reasons, but that's neither here nor there.) The fact that you, my mother, and the majority of people on the planet don't understand XML is not really relevant to the issue of vendor lock-in. b. -- <bas(a)bas.me.uk> <URL:http://bas.me.uk/> `It is like Swinburne sat down on his soul's darkest night and designed an organized sport.' -- David Foster Wallace, _Infinite Jest_, on American football
From: Rowland McDonnell on 23 Feb 2010 12:49 Daniel Cohen <dcohenspam(a)talktalk.net> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Daniel Cohen <dcohenspam(a)talktalk.net> wrote: > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > > It's an Epson Perfection 1200U. > > > > > > Presumably fairly old. As mentioned in my other post, it almost > > > certainly has TWAIN, but not Snow Leopard compatible TWAIN. > > > > Or, to put it another way, Apple broke something when it wrote Snow > > Leopard and the device driver writers now have to catch up and deal with > > these new problems Apple created. > > Not really. Apple moved from 32-bit programs as standard to 64-bit. > Nothing's broken, one can always run programs in 32-bit mode. And nothing goes wrong? There are *ALWAYS* broken aspects which become apparent when a new OS release is installed. Never anything else. New OS installations break previously working `things' - always, always, always. > I don't > know the full situation, but 64-bit provides extra functionality. And extra bugs and extra problems. Don't claim otherwise - this sort of thing always does. It's not as bad a probelm as the Intel/PPC code issue, but there are sure to be `issues'. Even if no-one here has ever heard of any of them. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 23 Feb 2010 12:49 Ben Shimmin <bas(a)llamaselector.com> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>: > > Ben Shimmin <bas(a)llamaselector.com> wrote: > >> Geoff Berrow <blthecat(a)ckdog.co.uk>: > > [snip] > >> The beauty of XML is that you [1] can quite easily write a program > >> that will translate it into something else; XSLT (itself XML) is one > >> good way of doing this. > >> > >> It wouldn't be much work to translate iPhoto's library's XML into, say, > >> an HTML-based gallery using XSLT. > >> > >> b. > >> > >> [1] `you' in the sense of, well, someone like me or Woody, at least. > > > > Quite - someone who's a highly skilled programmer with decades of > > experience behind them on many different platforms, and who finds it > > easy to learn-by-inference from the source code. > > > > None of that applies to almost everyone on the planet. > > I think we've got side-tracked here. You were talking before about > `lock-in' from iPhoto. Woody said there's no lock-in because Apple > provide both the original images and some XML for the metadata. And I said there is a lock-in and also that Woody's point's not relevant given *my* basic point. Woody's been playing his usual annoying and despicable game of ignoring my point so he can just witter on about how it is I'm wrong and he's right. He does that because he takes pleasure in rattling the case of ucsm's loony (me), since it makes me howl in pain and he likes that. > If > Apple vanished and took iPhoto with them, you could very easily pay > someone like me or Woody to work with that XML and produce something > useful from it. No I bloody couldn't. And the fact that by spending more money it's not impossible to re-gain access to the missing index if the person you contract with ends up delivering to spec isn't a sign of `no vendor lock-in', merely that it's not impossible to overcome the vendor lock-in. > (Obviously I wouldn't enter into a contract with you > for various very obvious reasons, but that's neither here nor there.) Quite - not that the reasons are anything other than confidential and secret to you rather than obvious. > The fact that you, my mother, and the majority of people on the planet > don't understand XML is not really relevant to the issue of vendor > lock-in. Actually, it's the very heart and soul of my point. Shame you're not interested in trying to understand, just interested in trying to put me down. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Richard Tobin on 23 Feb 2010 12:47
In article <1jedgmg.18gant14ltf0hN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: >XML is meant to be machine-read and that's all it's meant for, surely? Absolutely not. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-origin-goals Would you say the same about HTML? Aside: XML, like SGML, was conceived of as a markup language; that is as stuff that's added to a plain text document to indicate titles, paragraphs and so on. As such it's entirely reasonable to create XML files by hand, and read them without any computer processing. Of course, from the start it was seen that it could also be used as a format for arbitrary structured data, but even for that one of its advantages is that it is still, if used carefully, human-authorable and readable. -- Richard -- Please remember to mention me / in tapes you leave behind. |