Performance improvement for xml loads (+comments)

[Al Snell]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Bill Gribble wrote:

> I don't like XML all that much either, but be fair: zlib makes the XML
> file format actually SMALLER than the old binary data format, and one
> of the main reasons it's not in is because we decided to leave
> plain-text for a while as a debugging tool.

The information theorist within me is sure that zlib-ing a compact binary
format would produce the smallest output possible...

And as for the plain-text issue, it strikes me as odd that the
human-readability of XML is touted as such a great thing when nobody's
yet felt inclined to write the fairly trivial piece of code that would be
a filter to convert XDR or ASN.1 or anything, given the .x file or
equivelant, to and from a textual format for poking around in - meaning
that the costs of textual representation (in read/write time and increased
size) would only need to be invoked during development, when they're
supposed to be worth it, and not left for everyday users to suffer from
:-)

> 
> Bill Gribble
> 

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software