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> Man, I wish I didn't need DTDs. Unfortunately, the USAF TMCR says I do. Verbatim. TO-00-5-3

Then enjoy your complimentary security vulnerabilities.

Jokes aside what is it used for that XML Schema or other XML technologies can't do better?




Not a whole lot. And not just XSD, there's nothing either SGML or XML do that can't be done, fifty times faster, with fewer keystrokes, on standard - i.e., commodity, open - tooling, in Asciidoc (as it's deployed) or "Markdown" (with extensions).

USAF hasn't yet gotten nailed with the DTD attacks the way the USN was[0]. And that was a complete musterfluck. First they pulled all the handheld maintenance devices, then they basically mandated that all the stuff getting stuffed into entities could instead get shoved into a black box XML element stuffed full of Base64 or reference to an external binary or - hell - whatever you want. That's the current solution: the //multimedia element.

You'd think USAAF and USAA[1] would have learned something from this . .

[0] That's changing as we speak; DIA has a bunch of hardass new IT policies rolling out. God be praised.

[1] Although the USAA spec has more flex in it when it comes to geometry and other extremely specific rendering behaviors. It's much easier to optimize because it's not insistent that a frickin PDF parts catalog have draftsman-perfect line art.

Here's what the entities (specifically, CGM, the 800 lb gorilla of external entity references) do that can't be done in XML+SVG: ISO/IEC CGM:1999 line types (your dashed lines are exactly right); ISO/IEC CGM:1999 nurbs (so that the curves are just right). I have a bunch of counterarguments to these things and more, but the easiest one is : how much is a perfect dashed line worth? Is it worth twenty two million dollars? Because that's what it cost the Navy. That's assuming the PLAAF/PLAN doesn't hop inside your maintenance network off the east coast of Taiwan. Then you can buy your dashes at the reasonable cost of a few hundred dead sailors.

They need to swap out //multimedia for a standardized, text-based format yesterday, though. Either that or release an ISO profile for SVG, which honestly would be, like, a week's worth of work at most . . if you wanted to see it done, of course. Oh ISO Technical Steering, you and your loveable scamps made up almost entirely of stoneage software industry reps.




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