RE: [PHP] PHP and XML?

I don't see the point. The sender and the receiver have to agree on the meaning of any given document, whether it adheres to a DTD and uses XML or whether it's a fixed-field-width file. If I send you an order using my part-numbering scheme, you have to know up front how to translate that to your part-numbering scheme so you know what products I'm ordering; or if I send you a document in greek, I have to know up-front that you know how to read greek irrespective of whether the document is marked up in XML or not. Mark W. > -----Original Message----- > From: James Moore [mailto:jmoore@php.net] > Sent: 30 August 2000 12:10 > To: Wilkinson, Mark; 'abe'; php-general@lists.php.net > Subject: RE: [PHP] PHP and XML? > > > > > Having looked at XML briefly, I can't honestly see what all > the fuss is > > about. It's just yet another way of describing/encoding data > > *and* it takes > > up much more bandwidth too with all those nice <> </> tags. > Agreed, it's > > probably very flexible but if two parties agree to exchange > > information in a > > file, then I'm sure a more concise format could be negotiated....ie > > fixed-width fields or pipe-delimited with whitespace trimmed out. > > The idea is that the data is described so that no agreement > about the data > is needed... > > James > >