Fat-free Alternative to XML

[code_martial]

Anyone remember Xqueeze? It was meant to be a light-weight alternative to XML for data exchange between programs. I don't maintain it any more, so what about cases where such a thing is really needed? Check out the IM convo I just had with prodeezy:

prodeezy: ut?
CM: yeah
prodeezy: u remember what kinda compression we achieved with XSqueeze on decently

Comments

[justbecos]

Well, stripping off semantic details is equivalent to transmitting data under CDATA and attaching semantic meaning at the consumer. Infact, why CDATA, just send across plain text and try to make sense of it at the consumer.

The point is, if you don't want semantic information based on markups, don't use XML or JSON for that matter.

[code_martial]

CDATA doesn't have structure. JSON has structure.

[nvivek]

I don't know a whit about either CDATA or JSON, but I can argue :-). The introduction of structure is artificial. Let the consumer decide the structure. I don't know about you but I see a direct linkage to the way programming languages were designed early on. Lisp went with the latter approach. Code - data - all same same. Let the consumer decide.

[code_martial]

I really didn't get what you're trying to say there so you might want to elaborate. As for your chosen example, well, Lisp is cool but that's about all to its credit. In the end, the heavy lifting of most of the world's business computing is done by programs written in languages where code is code and data is data.