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Human readability

arebenti 1197981826|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

In New Zealand the SNZ is responsible for the resolution of the comments. One of the most important comments filed by New Zealand is the human readability of the Open XML format. I matters a lot because ECMA won't resolve it.

Human Readability of XML
There was a comparison of <cell> vs <c> in spreadsheets and which was faster. The goals of XML say, "6. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. 10.Terseness in XML mark-up is of minimal importance." — http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-origin-goals This DIS contradicts the goals of XML and best practices. The designers of XML knew what they were doing because while we can remember what "c" means in this case it becomes problematic when we get hundreds or thousands of these shorthand references. HTML, the web page language, has some shorthand references like this but then there are only around 20 things to memorize, so in practice it's not a problem. OOXML has hundreds of these cryptic names.

"Analogous wording shall be used to express analogous provisions; identical wording shall be used to express identical provisions.

This is what New Zealand proposed:

This DIS should be changed to follow the goals and best practices of XML by using human-legible terms and distinct terminology as required.

It sounds to me like a 500 pages patch of trivial changes. Someone needs to work on that comment. We should make up our mind how it can be done. If you are interested to help to resolve that comment just sent an email to us at noooxml at ffii dot org. We would appreciate your ideas on how to get it done.

last edited on 1198010928|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by arebenti + show more

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Re: Human readability

Alex Brown 1197990996|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

> best practices of XML by using human-legible terms

Isn't this a taste question of taste, and not a technical question? The W3C themselves have (also) pronounced "XML is text, but isn't meant to be read" (http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points.html). (There's also an argument that opaque element names are less culturally biased: what language should be used to name elements? English? only?) —- surely this, though worth a thought, can't be "one of the most important comment [sic] filed …"??

Coincidentally, SC 34 is standardising a technology, DSRL, which allows XML names to be adapted on the fly to one's own preferences (or language) while maintaining validity to the underlying Schema. That's the way to do it …

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Re: Human readability

arebenti 1198010718|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

An interesting remark. Actually it is a long-lasting struggle in the XML development field. An original objective of XML was to get better readable, semantic formats.

The use of English language does not matter as the whole specification is in English.

FFII e.V. experienced the following problem: Hartmut Pilch likes the artificial language Lojban (a language based on logic), so he used lojban as a naming scheme. So how to retrieve information? Basically you had to have a look at Jbovlaste, the Lojban dictionary, search for the Lojban term to get an idea where to find what you were looking for. Our mailing lists were given lojban names, such as sarji-help. I do not remember what Sarji means. Lojban is a neutral language and does not discriminate a particular language. It just excludes the part of the human population that is not able to learn Chinese within three month.

We abandoned Lojban but still parts of the server infrastructure and database management systems use lojban naming schemes. Self-Documentation is quite important. We do not understand our own software infrastructure.

I share the view that "beauty" of code promotes code quality. People who get used to writing cryptic code tend to adopt these practices. Clarity is no matter of taste. (Ironically Lojban was developed to test the Sapir-Whorf teaching: Better structured languages leads to better structured thoughts).

Why is it important?

It is an important comment because ECMA will not provide a resolution.
The resolution is mostly trivial but huge and it also may break the format.
It will simplify future migrations of OOXML and avoid the development of a Microsoft coder community dialect of XML.

Unclear naming schemes lead to "abuse" and "misapplication". One of my favorite blogs: http://thedailywtf.com/

Arguments can always be found to defend irrational traditions. As the British defend their own metric system or our admins their RFCs which were written up by a single person 15 years ago. It becomes religious, results in flame wars over religion. See e.g. http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
Sorry, I am not convinced. I also do not believe in: http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml
I am agnostic and it is a non-issue.

We need an API in order to use the Open XML files that is not part of the specification.

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