At 12:11 AM 9/4/2010, you wrote:
On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 11:29:58PM -0400, Rick Collins wrote: > XML? What's wrong with XML? Heavy? How heavy are a few electrons anyway? > For most data, XML ends up being > 50% tags (and < 50% data). It's hard to read for humans, bandwidth-intensive for machines, difficult to parse and generally ugly. Plus, the entire spec is enormous, and using only a subset of the spec means that we've lost a lot of the compatibility arguments in favor of it. Andrew
Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!The spec is large because it addresses a wide range of design aspects, which is one of the great reasons for using it, one file for the entire design, schematic, layout, mechanical, etc, even board lay up. So the compatibility issue is moot because any one app only needs to deal with the portion that applies to it. Just don't muck with the other parts.
The "heavy" issue is a red herring (are you planning on hosting this on a cell phone maybe?) No PCB file format is going to be easy for humans to read. Bandwidth? Back to the MCU in the cell phone I guess. "Ugly", now there is a great technical argument.
But I suppose it is better to re-invent the wheel. There is no reason to try to foster any sort of compatibility in file formats between all the different CAD tools. There are always conversion programs to be written, no?
Rick
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