Please review application/shf+xml

[Linus Walleij]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 ben at morrow.me.uk wrote:

> Rather, my question is, why are
> you using XML rather than (say) some format based on short-lines-of-
> ASCII (perhaps taking RFC2822 as your model)? Given that the data to
> be represented is pure ascii, and has a very simple structure, do you
> really need all the complexities of XML?

OK that's a fair and good question... Several things makes us go for XML.

First, it's an Internet thing we wanna do, so if we were just writing "the
most simple hexdump standard" the place to do it would probably be IEEE
and not IETF. Such de facto-standards (like S-records) already exist. We
expect the need for transport of this kind of data to increase, so an IETF
RFC is needed.

There is a general trend i Unix and other OS:es to in addition to being
textual, also be XML.

Also, if we should not go for XML, then the same line of reasoning about
simplicity would also go for BEEP and others, yes? These RFCs give me the
impression that textual transport should be made in XML where possible,
not only where complexity is above some certain level. (Correct med if
this is wrong.)

Perhaps the most important point raised was that if we need to extend this
format, e.g. replace it with an SHF v.2 at some point (if not before,
then as 128bit computing is introduced sooner or later), XML is easy to
extend, version and add structure in, if desired. When complexity
increase, XML scales fine.

Yours,
Linus Walleij