[OT] XML design intent [was Re: What YAML engine do you use?]

[Peter Hansen]

Stephen Waterbury wrote:
> it's interesting to note that the intent
> Steve Holden imputed to it earlier is not explicitly among them:
> 
> Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>> It seems to me the misunderstanding here is that XML was ever intended 
>> to be generated directly by typing in a text editor. It was rather 
>> intended (unless I'm mistaken) as a process-to-process data 
>> interchange metalanguage that would be *human_readable*.
> 
> Not unless you interpret "XML shall support a wide variety of applications"
> as "XML shall provide a process-to-process data interchange metalanguage".
> It might have been a hidden agenda, but it certainly was not an
> explicit design goal.

If merely thinking about the purpose of XML doesn't make it
clear where Steve got that idea, read up a little bit more in
the spec to the very first paragraph in the Introduction, and
click on the little M-in-a-circle next to the phrase "data objects".
I'll even quote it here for you, to save time:

"""What Do You Mean By "Data Object?"

    Good question. The point is that an XML document is sometimes
    a file, sometimes a record in a relational database, sometimes an
    object delivered by an Object Request Broker, and sometimes a
    stream of bytes arriving at a network socket.

    These can all be described as "data objects".
"""

I would ask what part of that, or of the simple phrase
"data object", or even of the basic concept of a markup language,
doesn't cry out "data interchange metalanguage" to you?

-Peter