XML Considered Harmful

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.lang.python, Christian Gollwitzer  <auriocus at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am 22.09.21 um 16:52 schrieb Michael F. Stemper:
>> On 21/09/2021 19.30, Eli the Bearded wrote:
>>> Yes, CSV files can model that. But it would not be my first choice of
>>> data format. (Neither would JSON.) I'd probably use XML.
>> Okay. 'Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no
>> and yes.' (I'm not actually surprised to find differences of opinion.)

Well, I have a recommendation with my answer.

> It's the same as saying "CSV supports images". Of course it doesn't, its 
> a textfile, but you could encode a JPEG as base64 and then put this 
> string into the cell of a CSV table. That definitely isn't what a sane 
> person would understand as "support".

I'd use one of the netpbm formats instead of JPEG. PBM for one bit
bitmaps, PGM for one channel (typically grayscale), PPM for three
channel RGB, and PAM for anything else (two channel gray plus alpha,
CMYK, RGBA, HSV, YCbCr, and more exotic formats). JPEG is tricky to
map to CSV since it is a three channel format (YCbCr), where the
channels are typically not at the same resolution. Usually Y is full
size and the Cb and Cr channels are one quarter size ("4:2:0 chroma
subsampling"). The unequal size of the channels does not lend itself
to CSV, but I can't say it's impossible.

But maybe you meant the whole JFIF or Exif JPEG file format base64
encoded with no attempt to understand the image. That sort of thing
is common in JSON, and I've seen it in YAML, too. It wouldn't surprise
me if people do that in CSV or XML, but I have so far avoided seeing
that. I used that method for sticking a tiny PNG in a CSS file just
earlier this month. The whole PNG was smaller than the typical headers
of an HTTP/1.1 request and response, so I figured "don't make it a
separate file".

Elijah
------
can at this point recegnize a bunch of "magic numbers" in base64