Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> He makes a good point that
> <integer>0</integer>
> is a dumb-ass way of encoding data. :-)

  I never understood why the closing tag must be named. What's the point?
It's only a complete waste of space and resources. If they at least had
made naming the closing tag *optional*, that would have been much better.
If a person writing XML by hand wants to name his closing tags, he can do
so, but programs generating XML could use nameless block-closing tags for
efficiency. A program reading such input will not get confused by nameless
closing tags, as long as it's a valid file.

  LaTeX has both named and nameless closing symbols for blocks. The nameless
ones work simply with a syntax like: \tagname{some data here}
  What would be wrong with that?

  I have always felt that XML is schizophrenic: It tries to be "human-
readable", but at the same time it's *really* intended only for programs
to read and generate. So it's trying to appeal to two completely different
targets, and the result is a bloated mess.

  And rather unnecessarily at that, IMO. If they had done it with similar
principles to LaTeX, it would have been human-readable, human-writable and
relatively compact, all at the same time. Sure, it would have made XML parsers
more complicated, but that's what programs are for: To ease the burden of
people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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