JimboCat wrote:
> On May 15, 4:17 pm, Joe Kesselman <keshlam.cat.nos...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>>> My main gripe against XML is that it's so verbose. In this particular
>>> application, tags and antitags take up more than ten times as much space as
>>> the actual data being sent. CSV was *so* much more compact.
>> XML's verbosity is part of what's made it rapidly accepted -- it's easy
>> to debug.
>>
>> On the other hand, XML has never claimed to be the right answer for all
>> tasks.
> 
> Microsoft, on the other hand, has effectively claimed so. Well, maybe
> not *all* tasks. But my new computer at work has Office 2007. Not only
> do I hate the new user-interfaces, but it turns out the new file
> format is . . .
> 
> wait for it . . .
> 
> a zip file full of XML docs.
> 
> Features were lost in the transformation. At least I think so: with
> the new user-interface I can't find half the features I used to use
> daily.

Office "productivity" packages are for writing business letters, doing 
simple calculations, making presentation slides, or handling transient 
or trivial information. They are inappropriate for large or persistent 
documents, or for important or complex documents of any size, as they 
lack the proper controls necessary to ensure the integrity of your 
information. By default they only represent the visual appearance of 
your work, not its internal structure or the reason why things are where 
they are.

Individuals or businesses pinning their continued existence on the 
reliability or reusability of information committed to these packages 
must take extensive (and expensive) additional steps to safeguard that 
information against misinterpretation, misrepresentation, and 
deterioration. Such packages are attractive to users solely because of 
their interface, and management which fails to realise this is failing 
in its duty to the organisation, and demonstrating a lack of 
understanding of the nature of business and professional information.

Fortunately, most business documents are relatively transient or 
trivial, and not of any significace beyond the immediate ambit of the 
decision they were written to inform, and can safely be discarded 
afterwards; so the applications used, and the file formats created, are 
not critical. Other, more important, documents can certainly be drafted 
with such packages, but for persistence and usability beyond the 
earliest stages they should be edited and stored using software and file 
formats of proven reliability and accessibility.

///Peter