At 11:39 AM -0800 on 10/31/99, Alain Farmer wrote:
<snip>
I we were writing a HTML editor, I'd agree: XML is the way to go. But we're
not.
>
>DeRobertis: What advantage does an export to XML
>offer?
>
>Alain: See above. But it also occurs to me that, in
>some cases, XML might be preferred over binaries for
>SECURITY reasons. Binaries are executable while
Not that type of binary. Your can't execute an OC stack anymore than, say,
a ClarisWorks drawing. Both are binary formats, though.
>text-based XML is not (unless I am mistaken). A lot of
>commercial servers will not accept the transfer of
>binaries; only text and graphics.
Graphics _are_ binary. Transfering them as text is a sure-fire way to
corrupt them.
>Alain: Or with some automated text-editing tools, like
>a programming language for example.
At which point you're probably better off with a binary format. Computers
can deal with binary stuff better than text. No parsing and converting to
do.
>Alain: Is the GUI of OpenKard currently available in
>the form of binaries? If not, when do you believe
>that they will be? My guess is that we are months
>away from this time. In the meantime, and in a matter
>of days, we could export stacks to XML and use a
>scripting language to rapidly prototype the GUI. Only
>the concept of the GUI, of course, not its
>implementation.
We export to XML and... write a XML viewer for them? Why not just write the
binary viewer -- saves a ton of overhead, the writing of yet another
parser, and the writing of an exporter.
