Peter Flynn <peter.nosp@m...> writes:
>Ah. One of those. Nothing so simple as
><transaction id="abc123">
>   <item  code="xyz789" quantity="3" price="29.99" account="1234567890"/>
></transaction>
>That would certainly be verbose, but It's worth bearing in mind design 
>goal #10 of XML, "Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance."

  Is it so verbose?

  The major redundancy I see is the end tag.

  But that's about it.

  On might say that a Java call

item("xyz789",3,29.99,1234567890)

  is shorter to denotate the item, but this is only possible if
  there are not many more possible attributes (which are omitted
  above). Otherwise one needs a means to indicate which
  attributes are given and which are omitted. But the XML call
  with the attribute names is more readable.

  When one tries to come up with something that is better than XML, 
  one sees that this is not that easy. 
  One might be able to do some fine tuning here and there.

  Verbosity is not annoying as long as one gains something by it. 
  When one gains readability or robustness, it can be accepted.