> If in the future Rebol becomes as widespread as XML, and if the data
> format is completely open and stable, then a Rebol-based format might be
> a valid alternative to XML. At present, Rebol is a proprietary language
> which is still under development and is subject to unilaterally decided
> changes.
I've had something very similar to this discussion with someone else
regarding Newtonscript-like frames vs. XML. Both are tree-structured data
formats. The real key difference, and the reason XML "wins," is that (while
more verbose) XML is much more of a "metadata structure." The ability to
"dialect" the data language via DTDs and the separation of structure
definition from data representation make it much more flexible. The cost is
some increase in complexity and size of data, but this is more than
compensated by increased utility. A pure-block Rebol implementation, even if
dealing with all-Rebol componentry, still suffers from the same deficiencies
-wrt- XML as, say, Newstonscript frames.
jb
