Re: Writing technical text

[William Ballard <nospam_50916@alltel.net>]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 11:08:35AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> is great if you are trying to get to programs or machines to talk.  It
> is terrible for something that must be composed by humans.  If you don't

Single-letter element-centric XML is fairly readable:

<o><t/>
  <p><o><p/><e>14</e><e>32</e></o></p>
  <p><o><m/><e>18</e><e>92</e></o></p>
</o>

could represent (14+32)*(18-92).
At least, it's fairly COMPACT.  Using an XSL stylesheet, you can 
transform it into something more portable.

Anything shorter is more easily edited in an editor, and takes less 
bandwidth to transmit.

Granted, it's not as compact as some representations, but you get the 
XML goodness.