Re: Is XML text?

On 2004-06-11 07:38:11 -0400, John Peacock wrote:
> Human readable is not the same thing as machine readable. XML files are
> structured data files, where the structure has a certain amount of
> permissible variability (e.g. certain whitespace is optional but other is
> not).

Yes, but just like most languages (HTML, C source, LaTeX, and so on).

> Without reading the entire XML file into memory it is, in general,
> impossible to perform the kind of analysis that diff requires. I
> believe that the last time this came up, someone said there was a
> least one xmldiff-like program which could deal with this, but then
> the difficulty is how to switch to that internally.

The same applies to HTML and programming languages.

> Some XML files could be diff'd using the built in tool and remain
> well-formed; others (especially machine generated) could not. The
> status quo is appropriate until such time as an XMLdiff can be added
> to the core libraries.

When I write XML files, I make sure that modifications will look OK
with standard textual diff. Not being able to get a textual diff is
quite annoying. IMHO, this should be user-configurable (on the
server and/or client side).

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent_at_vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% validated (X)HTML - Acorn / RISC OS / ARM, free software, YP17,
Championnat International des Jeux Mathématiques et Logiques, etc.
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / SPACES project at LORIA
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