[Freeciv-Dev] Re: do you really want to work on the ~ (was: registry)

[Jules Bean <jules@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 12:31:47AM +0100, Gregor Zeitlinger wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Andrew Sutton wrote:
> > oh my god! somebody shares my view of XML? its wonder ;)
> Somebody said that XML is the best invention in CS since ASCII and I don't
> think it's exaggerated.

(Getting badly off-topic now)

Actually that's rather a good comparison.

ASCII is:

Badly thought out.
Non-extensible.
US-centric.
Has very notable omissions.
Totally incapable of supporting even all the languages of the 'western' world.
It contains a foolish and arbitrary selection of control characters.

And yet, it's a standard, and because it's a standard, it's useful.

XML has a similar length list of flaws (not the same ones; XML is
extensible, after all), and it's main advantage is that it is now a
standard, so it's useful.

If I wanted to define a format for arbitrary structured data, I'd make
it much more like the 'C-like' example earlier in this thread. But now 
that there *is* a standard, there are some advantages to using it.

Jules