Following my post on plain text I stumbled across this interview with Pragmatic Programmers Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas about plain text and XML. Here is Dave Thomas on plain text:
The problem is, once we store data in a non-transparent, inaccessible format, then we need code to read it, and that code disappears. Code is disappearing all the time. You probably can’t go to a store and ask for a copy of Word 1, or whatever the first version of Word was called. So we are losing vast quantities of information, because we can no longer read the files.
One of the reasons we advocate using plain text is so information doesn’t get lost when the program goes away. Even though a program has gone away, you can still extract information from a plain text document. You may not be able to make the information look like the original program would, but you can get the information out.
There is lot more of interest in the interview so check it out.
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