• it_depends_man@lemmy.worldDeutsch
    1·
    2 months ago

    It is very cool, specifically as a human readable mark down / data format.

    The fact that you can make anything a tag and it’s going to be valid and you can nest stuff, is amazing.

    But with a niche use case.

    Clearly the tags waste space if you’re actually saving them all the time.

    Good format to compress though…

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      2 months ago

      I think we did a thread about XML before, but I have more questions. What exactly do you mean by “anything can be a tag”?

      It seems to me that this:

      <address>
    <street_address>21 2nd Street</street_address>
    <city>New York</city> 
    <state>NY</state>
    <postal_code>10021-3100</postal_code>
</address>

      Is pretty much the same as this:

        "address": {
    "street_address": "21 2nd Street",
    "city": "New York",
    "state": "NY",
    "postal_code": "10021-3100"
  },

      If it branches really quickly the XML style is easier to mentally scope than brackets, though, I’ll give it that.

      • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        2 months ago

        Since XML can have attributes and children, it’s not as easy to convert to JSON.

        Your JSON example is more akin to:

        <address street_address="21 2nd Street" city="New York" ...></address>
        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          2 months ago

          Hmm, so in tree terms, each node has two distinct types of children, only one of which can have their own children. That sounds more ambiguity-introducing than helpful to me, but that’s just a matter of taste. Can you do lists in XML as well?

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      I don’t mind xml as long as I don’t have to read or write it. The only real thing I hate about xml is that an array of one object can mistaken for a property of the parent instead of a list

    • Gremour@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      YAML for human-written files, JSON for back-to-front and protobuf for back-to-back. XML is an abomination.