[Remind-Fans] reminders as XML or HTML?

[David F. Skoll]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Sebastian Stein wrote:

> > David, I *have* to ask why XML is pure evil.
> Because with XML not every program author can claim to have invented an own
> file format.

Struck a nerve here, I did. :-)

XML is evil, in my opinion, because it's vastly over-complicated for 99%
of the uses to which it is put.  (Parsing the previous sentence is easier
for most humans than reading an XML file. :-))

(With XML, every program author *does*, in fact, invent his/her own file
format, because you are free to invent your own schema.  "Dia", for
example, uses XML as its native file format, but Dia XML isn't compatible
with anything else.)

XML throws out the tried-and-true UNIX notion of having programs communicate
with each other using simple chunks of text.  Instead, they use this horrible,
bloated file format that may as well be binary for all the readability
it possesses.

I'm not saying XML is *always* evil.  But for a simple thing like getting
reminders out of "Remind" in a computer-parsable format, XML is unbelievable
overkill.  Try rewriting simple programs like tkremind, rem2ps or rem2html
to parse XML instead...

Regards,

David.