XML DTD for the package configuration file

[Iavor Diatchki]

hello,

oh, nothing deep...  very often though i find it that people argue that 
there are no reasons _not_ to use a certain technology (a coinductive 
argument so to speak :-), indicating perhaps that using the technology 
is more important than achieving the final goal.  i myself do that quite 
often with technologoes that i like.

i think however that perhaps the right way is to think about what would 
a certain technology contribute to a project and then argue for using 
it.  on pretty much all occasions i've seen xml used (including this 
one) i have not been clear on what are the benefits of using it.  as 
pointed out earlier it is not very well suited for humans, and one needs 
tools to make heads or tails of it.  on the other hand it is hardly 
suitable for machines as the tools processing xml are not simple.

and finally to move away from generalities:  it would seem that the 
haskell libraries are intended for haskell programmers, that are likely 
to speak haskell, and have a haskell implemntation. however there might 
be haskell programmers out there that are not keen on learning xml, or 
installing xml tools (i am one such programmer).  and even if the xml is 
somehow hidden within implementations and haskell programmers never see 
it (which i doubt is possible anyways) we should keep in mind that 
haskell implementations are already very complicated and requiring them 
to understand xml will not make them any simpler.

bye
iavor



Isaac Jones wrote:
> Hi Iavor,
> 
> Could you follow up your post with an elaboration?  I haven't seen
> anyone post reasons NOT to use xml.  I'm becoming very curious as to
> why people are against it.
> 
> peace,
> 
> isaac
> 


-- 
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| Iavor S. Diatchki, Ph.D. student               |
| Department of Computer Science and Engineering |
| School of OGI at OHSU                          |
| http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~diatchki               |
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