Re: [9fans] XML

["David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gmail.com>]

On 5/21/07, Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 09:57 -0700, ron minnich wrote:
> > <9p><request>T</request><requesttype>R</requesttype><fid><number><digit><binary>1</binary><binary>0>/binary>...
>
>   ROTFL ;-)
>
>   Seriously, though, we all hate XML so much for all the right reasons
> that we kind of forget that it can be useful. I do have a couple of
> use cases I consider XML being appropriate at. But what about you guys?
> Do you remember XML being helpful on any particular occasion? I'm really
> curious.
>
> Thanks,
> Roman.
>

XHTML, on the surface, seems better thought out than plain old HTML.
That doesn't mean I like any of them though :-)

I once wrote a paper in Docbook, and was able to convert it to a PDF
via about 4 passes of XSLT processing.  Then I remembered that LaTeX
can do that a lot faster, and never went back to Docbook.  Not to
mention Docbook causes RSI faster than LaTeX from my experience with
badly hurting wrists and numbness in my fingers from all the <>\ etc.
:-)

XML has succeeded in making me accept and write more Lisp/Scheme these
days which isn't too bad for well roundedness.

Also some friends of mine and I have an XML markup based archiver for
files on various Unix like OSes called "xar".  I think it started as a
joke but it's so good at backing up resource forks, extended
attributes, and other nuances of various unixes of the day that I've
started using it for backup purposes on Mac OS X :-)

Apple even picked it up, made a bunch of changes, and gave us some
patches.  It might just end up in Leopard.

If you care:
http://code.google.com/p/xar/

It's been fun to hack on anyway.  Not that I've done much with it in a while.

About the only really neat thing, I think, about the table of contents
being in XML is that you can embed subdocuments in the archives
themselves.  Some folks started using it as a back end for packaging
systems, not sure if they ever completed.  Apple might be one of them,
but I won't ever know until that next release is out.

It's not clear to me that XML is easy for either humans or computers
to read, which is what I thought was one of its selling points.

Dave