• From: Norm Tovey-Walsh <ndw@n...>
• To: Roger L Costello <costello@m...>
• Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2023 14:41:43 +0000

> Which of the following XML representations is better? If you assert
> that one is better than another, please explain – in simple, concrete
> terms – why it is better?

There is rarely a single best answer in the absence of any sort of
information about use cases. Given that all printf format specifications
start with ‘%’ and ‘.’ is always the precision delimiter, I don’t think
you gain anything from having them in the markup *and* it introduces the
possibility of errors. (If you put ‘#’ in the start_of_specifier
element, what does that mean?)

One unanswered question in your examples is whether you intend to mark
multiple flags up separately or as a group:

  <flag>+</flag>
  <flag>0</flag>

or 

  <flag>+0</flag>

General guidelines: avoid ambiguity and avoid including text that can be
generated. Those are the right answers except in circumstances where
they aren’t, natch.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norman Tovey-Walsh <ndw@n...>
https://nwalsh.com/

> Any sufficiently undocumented code is indistinguishable from magic.

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• References:
  • Representing the components of a string in XML -- should delimitersbe represented?
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@m...>