This is exactly why the lifecycle issue is a red herring, in my
opinion. If you can express a document in XML 1.x text-encoding, the
fact that you usually process it as a faster and/or smaller binary
format doesn't preclude you from archiving it in a text-encoded form.
If W3C doesn't work on "binary XML" and some other group takes up a
similar challenge, that group may innovate away from and indepedent of
XML to an extent that it becomes a bother to convert to and from
text-encoded XML. For applications that need increased efficiency, the
objection that a long term archival format is needed could be considered
an argument for "binary XML" since it would be closely associated with
text-encoded XML.
sdw
Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
Yes. Same here. I reprocessed ATOS SGML docs
into HTML and XML in very short order in '95/96. As a lifecycle
enhancer, markup is quite effective (putting aside the
problems of semantic associations to GIs).
Human to human communications, and communications that
may require inspection to verify or validate benefit
greatly from text representations. Cut and paste
operations, debugging by hand, etc., are better
in plain text. My experience is (from VRML), that
one keeps the document in that format until satisfied,
then compiles it/binarizes/zips.
I don't think of a binary as a replacement for XML.
I think of it as an alternative encoding for those
cases where performance or size do matter.
That is why X3D has three encodings, all with equivalent
information properties, and each optimized for some
quality the designers thought critical. I fought
the idea of three encodings, but so far, we don't
have any evidence that they have created lifecycle
problems (just implementation costs). The problems
that are evident are usually in the object model
and the programming interface. So one might ask
if the binary introduces processor semantics problems,
but I doubt that is the case. It is a case for
better performance trading on reuse and access.
len
From: Norman Walsh [mailto:Norman.Walsh@xxxxxxx]
I think you're asking "how long does a document have to exist before
it becomes important to be able to read it independent of the systems
that originally produced it?"
| What about short lifecycle documents?
|
| Lifecycle is in the eye of the operator. While the lifecycle
| property is a compelling property of XML, it is not of
| necessity a constraining property of all of its applications
| in time and space. Forgetting is as important as remembering.
That's a good point. The long-term understandability of an ephemeral
message is irrelevant. Though there's nothing about understandability
that prevents one from forgetting :-)
To be a little more clear, I wasn't trying to assert that it be a
"constraining property of all of its applications" only that in the
"electronic document" use case, it was a property of very high
importance, in my opinion. That use case, as I understand it, is about
documents authored by humans for communicating information to other
humans. People tend to care about stuff for a long time. I have some
10 year old XML (uh, SGML) documents that I can read just fine and
some 20 year old word processor documents that I fear are gone
forever.
--
swilliams@xxxxxxxx http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@xxxxxxx http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw
|
