note
mirod
<p>Hey, hey, calm down everybody!</p>
<p>I do agree that the attitude of the XML community and of the Perl community
are really different, to the point of being antagonistic, as proven by the
2 posts above. The Perl way is "whatever works is fine", convenience tends
to be valued above completeness and formalism. The XML way is nearly the
opposite: one-format fits all, forcing "the right way" unto unsuspecting
coders (Unicode isa perfect example, it annoys 99% of people to no end
while just slightly improving the condition of the last 1%), elaborate
all-encompassing constructs (W3C Schemas).</p>
<p>Plus of course XML is verbose, and monsters like XSLT and W3C schemas are
way worse, while Perl favors economy of strokes and conciseness as a way to
get elegance and maintenability. At least you could do SGML golf!</p>
<p>I might be wrong, of course no one has any figure about module usage, but I
believe the people who write Perl modules "the XML way", like Matt, Robin
Berjon, Ilya Sterin etc... are in a way off-target. In a word they look a bit
like XML nationals lost in a foreign Perl country (not that Perl people
look terribly good when we go out and attend XML conferences, believe me!
I tend to get laughed at when I describe [XML::Twig] to
Real XML Gurus ;--). The modules they write
are not what the Perl community wants. Not that their work has no value, I
think it is really important for Perl to be used in other context and to spread past its current niche, but it
might be something to think about when we try to understand why some
very nice modules don't seem to be used much. In any case there
is a reason why
the current crowd of Perl hackers loves [XML::Simple] and refuses to use
[cpan://XML::SAX::PurePerl]. Java drones want SAX, Perl hackers want
XML::Simple (and don't get me wrong, I would be the first to say that I
don't think XML::Simple is a generic XML tool, but it is darn convenient!). </p>
</p>
<p>I know that XML is annoying as it oftens bring no improvement over
home-brewed formats. It is usually imposed by management in order to be
buzzword compliant, but for Perl hackers it brings very little to the table,
except an additional risk.
But let's face it, we will all have to deal with it.
XML is a bastard, verbose and actually quite tricky, format
that's being used not because it is the best one for any particular purpose
but because it is a standard, which allows Java projects to re-use
standard SUN or IBM libraries where Perl hackers would use a CPAN module or 2 lines of
custom code.</p>
<p>That said I see a couple of reasons why Perl hackers would want to use XML:
first as a data format it is actually quite powerful. It makes it easy to
stick HTML inside data, it makes it easy to mark data within HTML text. It
makes it possible to change the structure of the data without upgrading the
code right away (I guess that would be between "loosely coupled systems"),
really, you should try it ;--)</p>
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