"BX Proposal"

[The attachment has been removed and stored in 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2006Feb/0008.html
because of its size -- moderator]



Here is a proposal for binary XML. Its something I've been =
thinking about for years and when I saw the call for proposals =
(the day after the deadline) I thought I'd write it up. Maybe =
there are some ideas here that will be of use. None of it has =
been implemented and there are probably many errors.

You will find that it is full of invention. While most of the =
techniques are well known and many are enshrined in existing =
standards, the proposal rarely makes use of them. For instance, =
the "Octet" transform is much like X.690 BER and most of the =
compression is like bzip2 and gzip. I've done this to present =
alternative techniques that are tuned to XML specific problems =
and that take advantage of the specific opportunities that =
arise, such as (in compression) working on whole symbols for =
speed, instead of bytes. Otherwise I've tried to avoid invention =
for its own sake, especially avoiding new data structures that =
would unnecessarily expose the inner workings of a particular =
translation mechanism and so fix them into the standard where =
they might limit future innovation.

I am a retired systems software architect. I worked at Intel =
for over 20 years on a variety of projects including a couple =
of standards committees. Now I have my own projects, many of =
which use XML. Most don't need binary, but 4 or so are much =
like different use cases documented in the Binary Characteristics =
report.

My understanding of compression techniques comes mostly from =
"Managing Gigabytes (2nd Ed.)", Witten, Moffat, Bell, 1999, =
Morgan Kaufmann.

Attached is the proposal only. I'll follow up with a brief =
evaluation against the desired properties in a few days.

Paul Pierce
prp@teleport.com

Received on Tuesday, 7 February 2006 13:44:44 UTC