Re: Scripting in Gnome

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 11:32, jamie wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 17:14, Danilo Segan wrote:
> 
> > > XML as opposed to what? A propriety text format? An EBNF grammar format?
> > 
> > I suppose you're going to come up with XML scheme (or DTD) that will
> > be as proprietary as any other ASCII-based format with proper
> > documentation.
> > 
> 
> XML is designed to be human readable and so it should in theory be
> easier for someone to alter or create the xml files than it would a
> propriety format. 

First, let's do away with the "in theory" business.  Sometimes XML will
be more readable.  Sometimes it won't.  Lots of file formats can be very
readable.  There's nothing magical about XML in that regard.  The real
advantage of XML is its ubiquity.

Now, "in practice".  We all know and love the mathematical constant pi,
the ratio of circle's circumference to its diameter.  Have a look at its
definition in MathML here:

http://functions.wolfram.com/Constants/Pi/02/0001/

This is not more readable than the provided Mathematica representation
and certainly not more readable than a LaTeX representation.  MathML has
lots of great advantages.  Readability is not one of them.

--
Shaun