What Does Human-Readable Mean?

One of the most important features of XML is that it is human-readable. But the depths of this are not all apparent. First I will cover the obvious ones:

1. XML is text-based and can almost always be viewed with standard tools such as Windows notepad and Unix less and printed on paper.
2. Element-type names are almost always words in some spoken language.
3. Schemas and DTDs are a form of executable documentation of the grammar for a language.

Beyond these are some issues that are more subtle.

1. XML encourages a fixed ordering of elements.
2. XML encourages nesting rather than links for expressing hierarchy.
3. XML allows the use of element type names in your domain rather than a fixed set representing predefined data types and data structures.
4. XML schema languages allow the use of a wide variety of syntactic structures that are disallowed by more naive schema languages. This allows a more natural "language modelling".

HTML rendition created using stylesheets by Wendell Piez of Mulberry Technologies.

[up]|[home]