Hacker News Reader

Comment by yaronn01 | Hacker News Reader

Hi everyone, I am the author. Feel free to ask me anything or come up with suggestions!

Very cool! It got me daydreaming about an alternative to html designed from the ground up to minimize webpage bloat and avoid tracking (1x1 pixel gifs, etc.)

Why do you decided to use XML as the basic format?

XML is a standard format for markup (e.g. HTML). When XML is used where it shouldn't (object serialization) it adds complexity. Here it signals that creating a report is as simple (or at least as standard) as creating HTML. What other format you had in mind?

>XML is a standard format for markup (e.g. HTML).

XHTML is maybe the most hated incarnation of HTML, and is no longer encouraged.

You can still write xml-compliant HTML; whether it's called XHTML or not is splitting hairs. You still get all the benefits of a very rich toolset for document preparation. I work on a site that makes heavy use of xslt and works with xml-compliant HTML as input/output.

Maybe "SGML" would have been a better descriptor?

XML and XHTML are two different things. Related, but different. XHTML is no longer encouraged for website markup, that part is true too. That does not mean that XML is no longer encouraged.

Deleted comment

IMO JSON is less readable for this kind of document. XML is more explicit (at the cost of being chatty) but it's actually good for markup. For example nesting is easier to visually manage with XML due to tooling and explicitness of closing tags.

JSON is good for smaller objects you normally use during coding where you do not want the format to get in your way. Here I actually do want a very explicit format as it's the main thing.

Greetings, Professor Falken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com