Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: File-tpye plug-in architecture for Arch?

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 02:04:19PM +0100, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Sunday 21 December 2003 14:14, you wrote:
> > A generic XML diff tool will probably not perform sufficiently better
> > than diff(1) to be worthwhile. A good domain-specific diff actually
> > understands the file it's operating on.
> 
> If you say that then I must conclude you fail to appreciate what XML was
> created for. The whole point of XML based files is to abstract this kind of
> functionality from lots of different domains into a generic one.

No, that's the one thing that XML explicitly does not do. The whole
point of XML is that it doesn't do *anything* with "functionality"
(semantics): it is pure syntax.

> In short; xml diff will work on _all_ XML files.

Yeah, for a fairly uninteresting value of "work": precisely as well as
xdelta does, which also works on all XML files. Utterly useless for
merging.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
   `-             -><-          |

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature