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On Nov 25, 2003, at 5:51 PM, Alaric B Snell wrote: > 2) Write an XML DTD and use an off the shelf toolkit > > ...while apparently not realising that there are toolkits like ONC XDR > that are probably still more widely available than XML parsers, and > things like IFF and ASN.1. ... with the most significant difference between XML and the other options being the copious availability of good free software for many language/platform combinations XML. As long as this difference obtains, these endless discussions of the relative benefits of XML and ASN.1, or the utility of ASN.1 as a transfer format, will remain profoundly uninteresting. I'm serious: ASN.1 is of no interest whatsoever to the broader community for any purpose whatsoever until there's some software. The contrapositive may not be true, i.e. even given software, there may be some as-yet-unforeseen problem that keeps ASN.1 from becoming ubiquitous. But until there's some software it's all just empty verbiage. Cheers, Tim Bray http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
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