Non Sucking YAML parser

David Cantrell david at cantrell.org.uk
Thu Sep 14 14:18:55 BST 2006


On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 12:21:49PM +0200, Robin Berjon wrote:

> [XML namespaces]

Perhaps I'm being dense, but what is the point of namespaces in XML?  If
your code comes across a document it can't deal with cos it's - say -
describing a hospital visit instead of a book - then it's going to barf.
Code dealing with XML must know a lot about the documents anyway, so all
that extra verbiage is pointless.  Say 'title' instead of
<hospitalvisit:patientdetails:title>Mr</crap>* and <book:title>Winnnie
The Pooh</waffle>.

If instead your code is meant to handle generic documents and not really
understand them - perhaps it is code to traverse an arbitrary document
element tree, or to store a document in a database - then it doesn't
need to know about the namespaces anyway, nor can it be expected to
usefully compare documents, so again they're pointless.

Frankly, I want to take everyone who has been involved in speccing any
version of XML since the first one and SPANK THEM HARD.  All the extra
unnecessary crap makes XML harder to process both by machines and by
humans.

* no, I don't care if the syntax is wrong. the verbosity is what matters

-- 
David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness

  For every vengeance, there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
                                            -- Cartoon Law X


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