Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: documentation as info

[Tupshin Harper]

Andrew Suffield wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 12:51:43PM -0700, Tupshin Harper wrote:
>  
>
> > Andrew Suffield wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > XML docbook, now that's ugly.
> > >
> > > Docbook _is_ verbose, and the solution to this is the set of
> > > contraction features which sgml has and xml does not.
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > Or use an editor that removes the need to interact with the verbosity. 
> > The lack of contraction features is one reason that XML has proliferated 
> > in a way that SGML never did. It makes it *much* easier to write an XML 
> > parser, and also makes the parsing much faster. A worthwhile tradeoff.
> >    
>
> If you want to make parsing efficient, why in hades are you using XML?
> Use some sort of compiler instead.
>  
Sigh...did this have to turn into a XML vs. everything else argument? 
Again, it's all relative. If performance is of paramount importance, 
then you will use a custom format designed for your particular data 
requirements. However, if performance is one of many competing 
requirements (competing with ease of data portability, speed of 
development, etc), then XML has some advantages. It is a fact that XML 
was developed to be simpler, easier, and faster to work with than SGML. 
That is all that I was comparing it to.

-Tupshin