Re: [xml-dev] What is the “standard form ” of data?

If you have a hammer, everything seems to be a nail. If you've spent 
many years in unx environments, you expect all data being text, because 
you have powerfull tools to process text files (awk, grep, wc, etc...). 
If you come from XML world, you expect data being XML, because you have 
powerfull tools to process XML data (XPath, XQuery, Xslt, ...). If you 
come from front world, you expect data being JSon, because you have 
tools to process JSon (powerfull tools ? ;-)).

Changing programs is always an easy task, but changing human habits is 
much more difficult. In my opinion, you should let militarians use text 
files, and civilians use XML files. But you must provide efficient and 
easy to use tools to convert - without loss - from one format to the other.

Then, as an XML guy, convert text files to XML, process XML files with 
XML tools, and send them to civilians. Or process civilians files with 
XML tools, convert them to text and send them to militarians.

See you,
Christophe

Le 01/09/2022 à 14:37, Roger L Costello a écrit :
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> In his book /Software Tools/ Brian Kernighan says, “A program should 
> be viewed as just a stage in a larger process. Stages should be simple 
> and easy to connect. Keep data in a standard internal form for text 
> for other programs.” That last part – keep data in a standard form – 
> is particularly interesting.
>
> I am working on a project to map (translate) military air navigation 
> data to a civilian air nav form. What is the standard form? Is the 
> military form – tab-delimited text files (a.k.a., UNIX form) – the 
> standard form? Or is the civilian form – XML – the standard form? 
> Should the military form be maintained as long as possible, processing 
> the data using UNIX tools, and only at the final step is the data 
> converted to XML? Or should the military data be immediately converted 
> to XML and thenceforth use XML tools to process the data, ultimately 
> arriving at the desired XML instance? As an XML person, I took the 
> latter path, but now that I’ve learned a bit about UNIX, I question if 
> that was the best choice.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> /Roger
>