Re: Is XML a language or a data format?

> As nuclear war peril looms, maybe we should print data and knowledge
considered essential
> to future generations of civilisation, such as calendars and basic maths,
onto sheets of plastic,
> perhaps by stencil holes rather than perishable ink, and do so worldwide
now in case of nuclear war.
>  Making use of the persistent nature of plastic. Before the world loses
the ability to read binary,
> make and use electricity and fossil fuels, etc.


https://www.google.com/search?q=plastic-eating+bacteria&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS826US826&oq=plastic-eating&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l9.11664j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8


Thanks,
Dimitre

On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 12:33 AM Stephen D Green <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Perhaps, guardians of XML are guardians of civilisation.
>
> As nuclear war peril looms, maybe we should print data and knowledge
> considered essential to future generations of civilisation, such as
> calendars and basic maths, onto sheets of plastic, perhaps by stencil holes
> rather than perishable ink, and do so worldwide now in case of nuclear war.
> Making use of the persistent nature of plastic. Before the world loses the
> ability to read binary, make and use electricity and fossil fuels, etc.
>
> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 08:02, Stephen D Green <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Incidentally a plausible corollary of this is that civilisation might
>> collapse if both data and prose formats evolve into something which cannot
>> be persisted between generations.
>>
>> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 07:22, Stephen D Green <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am sure there are ample books devoted to good coverage of this. I
>>> think of Document Engineering by R Glushko and T McGrath as one which
>>> has this covered in a relevant XML-related context.
>>> Data is compressed prose.
>>> I could think of an example of a small UK charity publishing a record
>>> of its Annual General Meeting in which it first publishes minutes of
>>> the meeting, followed by a table of its annual accounts summary, which
>>> can be seen as tabulated data. This data could instead have been
>>> written as prose "In the first month of the year, January, we spent
>>> £200 on office stationery. In the second month ..." but that would be
>>> tedious to write and tedious to read. The table format circumvents the
>>> tedium.
>>>
>>> The tabulation of data historically preceded prose in Sumerian times
>>> around 3500 BC in Uruk where accounts of donations to the temple were
>>> recorded with symbols impressed into stone or clay tablets in a table
>>> format, and understood by convention. Only around 3000 did prose
>>> sentence construction appear to us in the archaeological record of Tel
>>> Fara and surrounding towns around 2800 BC, the Fara Period, at which
>>> point poetry as well as prose started to be written with symbols on
>>> clay and stone tablets. (Examples: Instruction of Sharappak, and the
>>> Temple Hymn of Kesh.) So historically the tabulated data idea is very
>>> ancient and very well understood and underpins civilisation through
>>> all of history in many parts of the world. It allows the recording of
>>> financial accounts, for example, and documentation of individual
>>> payments. Yet prose is an alternative which is almost as ancient and
>>> allows expression of ideas and recording of human sentences, such as
>>> the minutes of a meeting. The two have coexisted side-by-side
>>> throughout human civilization in most 'advanced' cultures. Arguably
>>> the existence of these two forms of writing has brought about
>>> civilisation by allowing the persistence of knowledge between
>>> generations.
>>>
>>> That is my take
>>> Regards
>>> Stephen Green
>>> ----
>>> Stephen D Green
>>>
>>> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022 at 00:59, Roger L Costello <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Hi Folks,
>>> >
>>> > I passed along the two Michael's comments to the colleague who
>>> asserted that data formats don't have grammars. Below is his response. Do
>>> you agree with his response?  /Roger
>>> > -----------------------------------------------------
>>> > So I offer....
>>> >
>>> >       "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
>>> In practice, there is." -Yogi Berra
>>> >
>>> > First, to clarify, when I said a data format "doesn't have" a grammar,
>>> I did not mean that literally like in formal computer science (CS) terms.
>>> >
>>> > I meant it figuratively. The term "grammar" in the CS sense, is just
>>> not relevant. It lives alongside "spelling" and "algebra" as things one had
>>> to learn once (high school?), but these terms aren't used nor needed with
>>> reference to practical work with data.
>>> >
>>> > Rather, we data people use terms like structure, struct, record, and
>>> layout. And of course "format".
>>> >
>>> > Are these just synonyms for "grammar"? I claim no. They denote things
>>> that are simpler. E.g., one big difference is no recursion. Are these terms
>>> just "simplified grammars" in the CS sense? Yes. But the words used are my
>>> point here.
>>> >
>>> > Case in point: There is a military data spec document that is 5000
>>> pages long and a large fraction of those pages describe the format of each
>>> of its messages.
>>> > The term "grammar" does not appear anywhere in that 5000 page document.
>>> > It is big, but it's 'just' a data format.
>>> > -----------------------------------------------------
>>> > My colleague went on to say that if you remove XML's recursion
>>> capability, then it may be used as a data format; otherwise, it is a
>>> language.
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>> --
>> ----
>> Stephen D Green
>>
> --
> ----
> Stephen D Green
>


-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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