::scr Ramblings of a Classic Refugee or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love OS X

[Alaric Snell]

On Tuesday 05 February 2002 16:32, you wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 03:15:57PM +0000, Matt Webb said:
> > A binary file with a separate definition document gets rid of the
> > primary advantage of XML, namely that it can be edited in a standard
> > text editor.
>
> A common trap. You're forgetting that ASCII is a binary format, a
> sequence of 7bit numbers which happen to map to lookup table which
> describes how to draw that character.

Or, in the case of XML, UTF-8 is sequence of variable length tokens ranging 
from 8 to... 48 or so? bits, which are encodings of 32 bit numbers taken from 
a *large* lookup table which do not map directly to characters (since there 
are combining characters that add accents to the previous character, 
characters that merely encode metadata and are never drawn as anything, and 
all that jazz).

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software