[Openstreetmap] Re: [Openstreetmap-dev] OSM's Schema - moving it forwards.

Ben Gimpert ben at somethingmodern.com
Tue Nov 29 09:53:17 GMT 2005


On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 08:46:13AM +0000, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
> >- The gain in simplicity is only for humans. The xml is NOT to be read
> >by humans. IF it is desired to read the xml manually, a small piece of
> >script code can turn the xml to a much more human readible form.
> 
> Some interesting and valid points but I have to reply on this one :-)
> I've always understood one of the key advantages of XML to be the fact that
> a human can read it, make sense
> of it and edit it in a text editor if need be. I write XML directly all the
> time (XHTML).

Nah, I think this is buying the XML marketing more than the reality.

Show an ignorant person the average stream of XML and they'll absolutely
balk and make neither heads nor tails of it. The same is true of
(X)HTML. However, show someone a simple CSV of rows n' columns and this
is not the case -- most people are accustomed to table structures from
their education. Tree structures require a trek up the learning curve,
and tree structures with bloat-tastic sugar like XML take an even
greater trek up the learning curve. And this says nothing about the
classic tree -> RDBMS model conversion. Blech.

<rant> Though I'm certainly on my soapbox now, I believe XML will go
down in history as one of the greatest failures of IT in the 1990's. It
doesn't even achieve its own aims, and facilitates a *huge* amount of
pseudo-work in the form of standards wanking. </rant>

Open and public standards are vital to everything, but "open and public"
does not equal XML.

		Ben





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