Re: [xml-dev] Engineering versus Science, Anecdote versus Evidence ... [Was: Designing an experiment to gather evidence on approaches to designing web services]

> # This guide is meant for the design of XML that is to be generated
> # and consumed by machines rather than human beings.  Its rules are not
> # applicable to formats such as XHTML (which should be formatted as much
> # like HTML as possible) or ODF which are meant to express rich text.

the primary purpose may be for machine use, but it is funny how many times
a human has to get in there to troubleshoot the content.


>
> <person>
>   <name>Barack Obama</i>
>   <children>
>     <child>Malia Ann Obama</child>
>     <child>Natasha Obama</child>
>   </children>
>   <employment>
>     <job from="1997" to="2004">State senator</job>
>     <job from="2005" to="2008">Senator</job>
>     <job from="2008">President</job>
>   </employment>
> </person>


Just for the purpose shown here, having the nesting makes it easier to see
and manage the content. Add an editor that has some XML smarts, I can now
collapse the children or employment section to get all the content out of
the way. Having to trouble shoot very flat and long sturctures is very
painful without the nesting that you recommend removing. Yeah it might not
be needed to get the job done, but part of the goal for XML was to have a
human readable format, otherwise, why not just go binary and be done with
it.

..dan