XML Considered Harmful

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 7:11 AM Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Examine prior art, and I truly do mean art, from Matt Parker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBX2QQHlQ_I

ChrisA