Sync with gnome releases

[Linas Vepstas]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 10:42:22AM +0100, Al Snell was heard to remark:
> On 20 Jul 2001, Lauren Matheson wrote:
> 
> > (favoring xml).  The response was that xml could easily be generated for
> > export, but that other apps shouldn't be directly accessing the data
> > file anyway.  There's some UI stuff still in with bonobo, but I think
> 
> Aye. One of the biggest badnesses of XML is the encouragement to abandon
> data hiding. I've even seen talk on xml-dev that XML is "post OO" and that
> data hiding is another one of those silly academic mental masturbation
> exercises like formal methods or proving software is correct.
> Nnnnnnnnggggmmmmmfffff!

Its not the data hiding, its the data-morphing. 

Yeah, XML is mis-advertised.  Now you can read the data, but so what? 
You still can't do anything useful with it, nor is it likely that you'll
be able to repair a damaged xml file.

When gnucash used a binary file format, it went through something like 
7 or 8 version changes, as new stuff was added.  (BTW, the binary format
was faaaast compared to parsing xml).  As gnucash continues to evolve, 
I'm sure that the xml file will undergo 7 or 8 version revs over the next 
few years.  

The point is, other apps shouldn't be accessing the gnucash data file 
directly, unless they're ready to deal with 7 or 8 revs.  And if they are,
they're still wasting thier time, they should be programing to the gnucash
engine API, which already has the relevent features, and which does gaurentee 
forward compatibility. 

N.B. The Microsoft .net/SOAP story is not significantly different.  Sure,
with SOAP (unlike corba/iiop) humans can 'read' the network traffic, because 
its ascii xml not binary.  But so what?  Everytime some programmer tweaks
this or that, the sbtle details of what's in that XML will change, and you'll
be up a creek without a paddle.   Just where microsoft will want you to be:
you're not going to be successfully creating open-source clients for closed
source proprietrary SOAP servers -- the protocol will keep changing on you 
in nasty ways.

To get the perceived benefit of XML, you need to also standardize any given
particular protocol, bu ietf rfc or other means.  So that programmers have
some gaurnetee that it is not changing in (incompatible) ways.

--linas


-- 
I'm very PUBLIC-MINDED, I'm helping a NIGERIAN get his $25,000,000 back!