Re: [Sheflug] Re: Open Office

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "ps" == Paul Sims <wulfie [at] wulfric7.co.uk> writes:

    ps> If XML becomes the de-facto standard it should make docs fully
    ps> portable. Of course, the XML will just be a wrapper around MS
    ps> doc types thus spoiling the effect.....

No.  It only means the parsing engine can be shared.  XML is to
document processing as BNF is to compiler construction.  A standard
way of expressing structure, with no statements made about semantics
at all.
>>>>> "Will" == Will Newton <will [at] misconception.org.uk> writes:

    Will> And all document sizes will be over 1Mb even for a post it
    Will> note. :) Seriously, I think I'm the only person in the world
    Will> that thinks XML is a horribly inefficient format, in both
    Will> parsing time and file size.  And CSS, whooo, just reading
    Will> that standard makes me come over queasy. :)

Parsing time?  XML is very fast, and saves a lot of time for the
semantic processors precisely because of the verbosity.  Not to
mention being far more likely to be syntactically correct and easily
verified.  File size?  What do you think gzip is for?

CSS is tough, I'll admit.  The alternative is Word.  (Think about why.)

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________  _________________  _________________  _________________
What are those straight lines for?  "XEmacs rules."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
- <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
 "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.