Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> writes: > Everett M. Greene wrote: > > Not having looked at the XML-based proposals, I'm not familiar > > with what's being proposed, but if the preceding is a valid > > example, I don't see any significant benefit. As you say, > > there's not semantic difference and clutter is being added for > > no obvious reason. > > That's why I said, it's like going from English to pig-Latin. > Semantically there is no difference. Any flaws in the GEDCOM > data model are in both versions. And there are flaws, though > GEDCOM obviously is not completely useless. (And that's why > no one seems to be in a big hurry to fix it.) > > I can think of two advantges of XML: > > 1. Open source and commercial XML parsers are everywhere. > > 2. If you know how to use XSL, you can write a presentation > stylesheet. Your GEDCOM (XML) file plus the XSL is all > that's necessary for a sufficiently modern browser to > make a fairly nice web page. In other words, instead > of writing code to transform GEDCOM into HTML, you write > a high-level spec for that code, and the user's browser > does all the rest of the work! Those are valid points for those who are interested in generating Web-oriented presentations. But what portion of people dealing with genealogy are interested in doing that?

On Jul 19, 10:51 am, moja...@mojaveg.lsan.mdsg-pacwest.com (Everett M. Greene) wrote: > Wes Groleau <groleau+n...@freeshell.org> writes: > > Everett M. Greene wrote: > > > Not having looked at the XML-based proposals, I'm not familiar > > > with what's being proposed, but if the preceding is a valid > > > example, I don't see any significant benefit. As you say, > > > there's not semantic difference and clutter is being added for > > > no obvious reason. > > > That's why I said, it's like going from English to pig-Latin. > > Semantically there is no difference. Any flaws in the GEDCOM > > data model are in both versions. And there are flaws, though > > GEDCOM obviously is not completely useless. (And that's why > > no one seems to be in a big hurry to fix it.) > > > I can think of two advantges of XML: > > > 1. Open source and commercial XML parsers are everywhere. > > > 2. If you know how to use XSL, you can write a presentation > > stylesheet. Your GEDCOM (XML) file plus the XSL is all > > that's necessary for a sufficiently modern browser to > > make a fairly nice web page. In other words, instead > > of writing code to transform GEDCOM into HTML, you write > > a high-level spec for that code, and the user's browser > > does all the rest of the work! > > Those are valid points for those who are interested in generating > Web-oriented presentations. But what portion of people dealing > with genealogy are interested in doing that?- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - Well.... if you enter the phrase "this website" and the word genealogy into google it comes up with one million two hundred ninety thousand hits. So someone is interested for sure!