Related to Issue 2
Post by: David Harrington
Date: 2003-12-18
This message lead to the creation of Issue 3.
Hi Rainer, Let me start about by saying that I am often curmudgeonly, so please forgive any negative tone to this message; I am making the comment to be constructively critical. I have had experience dealing with problems similar to those I find in this proposal, so please pay attention to the concerns. I want to clarify my position, which you aggregated with other positions, and inadvertently misstated. Since it has my name in the greeting, I would like to make sure your misstatement doesn't mislead anybody about my position. I did not say that XML-based syntax is a good idea. It may be; it may not be; whether it is will depend on lots of factors that need to be weighed carefully. Two of the potential benefits of using XML are reuse of existing implemented standards (which benefits both operators and implementors) and interoprability with other application formats (which benefits application developers and consequently application users). I think an XML-"like" syntax may be a BAD idea because it achieves neither of these two benefits, and adds the negative tradeoffs of having to maintain the new XML-like syntax, requiring operators to learn a unique syntax for syslog, and having to support a unique new syntax in implementations. Making it "look like" XML doesn't mean it gets the benefits of using XML. Beyond this point, I make only one other comment about the proposal. Using existing terms for existing standards to refer to non-compliant "look-like" things benefits few. It is misleading and adds confusion to the already difficult process of standardization. I think it is a bad idea to refer to your proposal as "simple XML" - it is either XML or it is not - or to refer to the information as a "cookie", which has a commonly accepted usage which this usage is not. My $.02 (or $.01). Thanks, dbh