Saturday, June 20, 2009

Wow, nice rant for XML

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML

"SGML was a major improvement on the markup languages that preceded it
(including GML), which helped create better publishing systems and helped
people think about information in much improved ways, but when the zealots
forgot the publishing heritage and took the notion that information can be
separated from presentation out of the world of publishing into general data
representation because SGML had had some success in "database publishing",
something went awry, not only superficially, but fundamentally. It is not
unlike when a baby, whose mother satisfies its every need before it is even
aware that it has been expressed, grows up to believe that the world in general
is both influenced by and obliged to satisfy its whims. Even though nobody in
their right mind would argue that babies should fend for themselves and earn
their own living, at some point in the child's life, it must begin a
progression towards independence, which is not merely a quantitative difference
from having every need satisfied by crying, but a qualitative difference of
enormous consequence. "

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