• To: 'Michael Kay' <mike@s...>
• Subject: RE: Data streams
• From: "Stephen E. Beller" <sbeller@n...>
• Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:38:15 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <E1CbS9D-0003Xg-00@u...>
• Organization: NHDS, Inc.

Yes! This would be an economical use of XML. Problem is, I just don't see
any value in it. It can't be used to populate a spreadsheet and it has no
semantic value. You'd be better off keeping the comma and saving 6
characters. But I think you're on the right track.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@s...] 
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 6:20 PM
To: 'Peter Hunsberger'; 'Stephen E. Beller'
Cc: 
Subject: RE:  Data streams

> Use the number 10, now the difference is 51 to 2 or a ratio of ~26 to
> 1.  Use the number 100 and the ratio is 52 to 3 or ~17 to 1.  Six
> digits? 56 to 6 or ~10 to 1. Now add multiple columns of data (as any
> realistic example would do) and the ratio falls even farther.

Now encode your six-digit numbers with a more economical tag such as

<d>123456</d>

and the ratio is 13:7. Might not be everyone's idea of best practice, but if
you want a compromise between size and explicitness then it might be the
right one for you.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

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    • From: Robert Koberg <rob@k...>

• References:
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    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>

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