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Re: mnot-03, Infoset & syntax in sect. 2


On Dec 26, 2003, at 2:21 PM, Bob Wyman wrote: 

I will fight down to the last ditch and beyond any
suggestion that an Atom feed is anything but an XML
instance, i.e. a sequence of Unicode characters with
angle brackets and so on.

	You will fight "any suggestion"? No matter how well designed,
no matter how well supported by open source tools, no matter how well
the interop issues are dealt with, etc.? But, on XML-DEV, you recently
suggested that your real objection to suggestions that ASN.1 encodings
be used is that there wasn't sufficient open source tool support.

What I said on xml-dev is that discussions of the relative merits of XML and ASN.1 were not being decided on points of merit because XML had the overwhelming advantage of tons of good free software.

And yes, I believe in the principle of documenting the bits on the wire as the basis of interoperability; XML being a current best-practice along these lines.

Now,
are we to assume that this was just a ruse? Even if the tools appear
and are well crafted, you would still oppose their use? Why weren't
you honest about your position when you wrote on XML-DEV? Why the
ruse?

... which makes me think that maybe I'm feeding a troll in answering this.

 Already, we've seen a number
of cases where people with popular blogs have had to stop providing
RSS feeds due to bandwidth costs.

I wasn't aware of this, but I've been busy. General question: is this one of our big concerns?

 As this model of XML-based and
pull-based publishing expands, it is inevitable that it will be
crushed under its own weight... i.e. its bandwidth weight.

I lack the hubris to make predictions about what will "inevitably" happen in a system as complex as this.

Cheers, Tim Bray http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/