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

[Clark C . Evans]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:14:51PM +0000, Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
| Thanks a lot for this link.  The basic idea is very similar, but apparently
| they have done a lot more of formal specification than I have ever
| attempted.  There are several differences in the details, so neither is
| superset of the other.  I'll comment on the differences once I have time to
| read through their docs.

I look forward to the commentary, could you do it or cc the 
YAML discussion list?
    
| The emphasis is on using indentation and leading markers to denote
| structure, in contrast to markups, puctuations, quotes and escapes in the
| markup languages.

Exactly.   We started with leading markers (% and @ initially) and
eventually found ways that allowed us to skip these...

| There are facilities for conversion among the data structures: set, seq,
| dict, seqdict, with various specifications.  I do not see how yaml indicates
| the types of structures.

YAML does this with the bang (!) you can see this in the preview
for type family (http://yaml.org/spec/#preview-family) and also
in the transfer method section (http://yaml.org/spec/#syntax-trans)

| Yaml is very interesting.  I'd say aobut 60-80% similar to what I did.  I'm
| sure I have stuff that they don't have.  I'll dig up my stuff anyway.  If
| anyone is insterested in seeing a mess of code and doc ... :-)a

I'd love to hear about the overlap; I'm sure we don't do everything.
But if you found something important that we don't have, I'd love to
know since we'd like to start finalizing the spec at this time so that
implementations can start emerging.

| The hype on XML got me really depressed, as I thought no one would 
| be interested in a direction I regard as fundamentally better than
| XML.  Any new development that can make my life easier is very
| welcome.

I think the hype of XML will start to backfire as people
realize that its function isn't magical, and that their
particular solution isn't all that useable.   The information
model fits documents well, but is a poor match for object
serialization, which is 90% of the use cases programmers
face.  XML came from the document processing domain, as such
it had a good head-start, but I think something like YAML that
caters more to the programmer intead of the document author
will eventually win out.  

All in all, its great to hear that you were thining along similar
line of thought a few years ago.  This is very comforting to me. 
I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on YAML, and if possible,
we'd really welcome your participation!

Best,

Clark

-- 
Clark C. Evans                   Axista, Inc.
http://www.axista.com            800.926.5525
XCOLLA Collaborative Project Management Software