[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Bloat: XML, GUI design (was: Re: [OT] Gnome configuration (was: Re: Congrats! [gnome font rendering]))



On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 12:51:40AM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote:
[snip]
> XML for this purpose is ugly as well. You can use XML for seldomly used
> applications, but not for such important things. Hell, compare "set
> antialias=1" with the monster we are talking about - 8..9 times of the
> code size. It is already to much for a single boolean value. Where
> should all this end? In a 10Ghz machine with DDR5000 RAM, using 90% of
> the CPU time to parse the useless metadata?
[snip]

My $0.02 suggestion: nobody says you can't encode XML in a compact form. 
Use single bytes/characters to represent start tags and the same char +
128 for the corresponding end tags, with other appropriate encodings for
#CDATA, etc.. You can always write a convertor to convert to/from this
compact representation to full-fledged, "bloated", human-(un)readable XML.

Or better yet, structure the config format so that it's easily convertible
to/from XML. XML was meant to be an *interchange* format anyway, not an
*internal* format. As long as you have a homomorphism between the two
formats, everything should be fine. This has the added advantage of not
requiring binary (i.e., non-ASCII) representation.


T

-- 
"You know, maybe we don't *need* enemies." "Yeah, best friends are about all
I can take." -- Calvin & Hobbes

Attachment: pgpK5g0TDSu1J.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: