Ventonegro

I do not have strong feelings about XML, be it for or against it. I don’t use it much because I use either S-Expressions with Scheme or Lua tables with Lua. I believe XML can be helpful, but people need to know how to use it.

I have come across an application of XML to store an animation, frame by frame, like the animated GIFs of old. Each frame is then an image, stored as an XML element. The bizarre part is that every pixel is stored as an individual element inside the frame:

<frame id="Frame001" width="180" height="240">
  <array type="Int8">
    <Int8 value="230"/>
    <Int8 value="012"/>
    .
    .
    .
  </array>
</frame>

I believe this is the most “by the book” implementation. But this is far from optimal. When inspecting the files with a text editor (yes, I needed to do that) it was very painful. Besides, the files are huge! Why not be sensible and use Base64 encoding for the image part:

<frame id="Frame001" width="180" height="240">
  TWFuIGlzIGRpc3Rpbmd1aXNoZWQsIG5vdCBvbmx5IGJ5IGhpcyByZWFzb24sIGJ1dCBieSB0aGlz
  IHNpbmd1bGFyIHBhc3Npb24gZnJvbSBvdGhlciBhbmltYWxzLCB3aGljaCBpcyBhIGx1c3Qgb2Yg
  dGhlIG1pbmQsIHRoYXQgYnkgYSBwZXJzZXZlcmFuY2Ugb2YgZGVsaWdodCBpbiB0aGUgY29udGlu
  dWVkIGFuZCBpbmRlZmF0aWdhYmxlIGdlbmVyYXRpb24gb2Yga25vd2xlZGdlLCBleGNlZWRzIHRo
  .
  .
  .
</frame>

Nobody could inspect the information of previous format anyway, the files gets much smaller, one could edit them by hand (like I did to copy frames between animations). And no, the files are not being compressed because they are part of a build process.

It only remains to be seen why it is done this way. I believe it was a mixture of a non-too-intimate knowledge of the technology and a desire to use it in it “purest” form, like those people who must design their programs with all the design patterns known to man. With time they may learn that a sensible dose of pragmatism is very healthy.