--- Michael Champion <mchampion@x...> wrote:

> Tatu Saloranta wrote:
...
> Those who wish to get out of the XML frying pan
> might remember the fire 
> down below.  XML has many disadvantages, especially
...

Good points, but:


...
> but I think XML got  popular partly because there
> are even more 
> requirements for information interchange that are
> somewhere in the 
> middle - some mixture of human readable text and
> machine processable data. 

Is this really so? I mean, localized text, sure... but
one completely marked up? Such use cases are common in
some domains (knowledge/content management systems),
but not in many others. You could of course argue that
they may be more common in future, with increased
semantic mark up... we'll see.

...
> scenarios, where somebody else's app, maybe written
> in a compiled 
> language, has to use your data?  What happens when

Actually, I would see this as being easier with JSON
than with XML (although granted XML-binding tools have
improved markedly -- JAXB 2, for Java, is almost easy
to use)? This because it does not have
hierarchical-to-objects impedance, like XML does.
That's the single most important benefit, to me. That
it's also "native" Javascript code is just icing on
the cake.

> you need to start 
> supporting HTML markup of the text fields in those
> objects?  JSON will 

But if it's HTML markup, it is quite separate concern
from structuring of the message itself, and thus often
best transferred as opaque blob (same way as often
it's practical to store XML in relational DB as BLOB,
instead of going through the trouble of bridging the
impedance and convert between data models).
Optimally, that content would be marked up using,
well, HTML or XML. I wouldn't see the benefit of
trying express that markup in JSON, nor necessarily
the need.

-+ Tatu +-


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