Re: Atom vs Polyglot

Larry Masinter wrote:
>
> I don't have any problem with ATOM today. However, I think the
> community is facing a transition from XML to JSON as a preferred
> method of language-independent exchange of structured data. If ATOM
> were to be designed today -- carrying metadata and control structures
> (about content) and also carrying marked up rich text, I'd look for a
> protocol that used JSON for the structured data and HTML for the
> marked up or active next.
> 

And I'd look for something like XML Atom for archiving user-generated
content.  Decoding SGML-ancestry markup, particularly XML, will likely
be easily done in 50-75 years, the advantage of declarative code.  An
imperative Atom format carrying control structures about content,
becomes lost data over the long term if the interpreter is separated.

IOW, an XML parser will always be an XML parser and Atom ain't that
hard to figure out; but I expect what browsers do with any given JSON
Atom will always be in flux, with potential semantic loss over time due
to this API versioning not being tied to the data.  Any corruption in
an old-old Atom store would be readily apparent as malformed XML...

If my system benefits from using JSON Atom at the UI layer, I'd do it,
but the back-end storage is expected to last decades, and in my book
XML has the upper hand there.  I'm not as anti-JSON as I come across,
it's just pushback against the notion that JSON obsoletes XML, when I
see uses for both.  I've never understood the XML hate, I took to it
like a duck to water...

-Eric

Received on Tuesday, 26 March 2013 05:17:01 UTC