XML overuse? (was Re: Python to XML to Python conversion)

[François Pinard]

[Peter Hansen]

> XML was adapted from SGML to meet several key goals.  Among those was
> the desire to make a format which was easily human-readable and editable
> using simple tools like text editors.

I do not think so.  SGML already has these virtues, and much more than XML.
The main goal of XML was to please machines, because full SGML is so
difficult to parse.  The price to pay to please machines was a loss of
readability for humans.  XML is so verbose that real information gets
overwhelmed under tags.  The fish often gets drawn in practice.

This being said, XML has been immensely successful, at least in the
democratic fields, because it is so easier to implement.  Moreover, many
people consider it is an acceptable compromise between humans and machines.
But at least compared to SGML, we have to remember that it is a compromise
away from humans and towards machines, and never turn the argument around.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard