[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Pythonmac-SIG digest, Vol 1 #739 - 7 msgs

[Daniel Lord]

on 6/17/01 9:08 PM, Richard Gordon at richard@richardgordon.net wrote:

> The Flash suggestion has some merit, altho I think that XML is just
> another example of internet banality that seeks to imitate what you
> could do on any desktop with a tab-delimited file a decade ago, but
> is packaged as some kind of intellectual breakthru.

Maybe you are not a programmer and don't appreciate the significance of XML
or maybe you are just trolling. It only seems to be just another text
format. XML is a quantum leap forward in textual data representation: for
the first time a widely accepted text data standard representation fully
de-couples the data with the format of the display and allows a clean
model-view-controller implementation. Programs which are oblivious to some
of the content of an XML file can still parse it for the information they
are aware of without failure or confusing the data value. Programs wirten
before new data elements and whole new structures are added will still work.
Obsolescence is out.

Try that with a simple text file. No simple text file ever did that even
standards such and Microsoft INI.

XML is a very big deal.