1. XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
When
you write XML it should be readily available over the Internet. XML is
not intended as a programming language for stand-alone systems, but
rather to be used across the Internet for a wide variety of sources.2. XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
The
beauty of XML is that it was intended to be used for as many things as
possible. This flexibility can sometimes make it more difficult to
understand, but ultimately, XML can be used to describe a Web page
about flowers or a database of car parts or nearly anything you can
imagine.3. XML shall be compatible with SGML.
SGML
or Standard Generalized Markup Language, is the ISO standard on which
all XML and thus XHTML documents are based upon. If a document isn't
compatible with SGML, then it cannot be called XML.4. It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
XML
was always intended to be easy to use and process. Because XML is based
on human-readable text, this makes it a lot easier for programmers to
figure out what is meant by the XML tags. This in turn makes it easier
to write a program that processes those tags.5. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the minimum.
Ideally,
there would be zero optional features. Optional features cause problems
because they are not guaranteed to be in any given situation. The more
optional features there are in a system the more combinations there are
for the system and so the more difficult the programming becomes.6. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
Rather
than having elements that are named a3209zd you would have an element
named . Someone reading your XML should be able to
make an educated guess about what the data is that's being tagged.7. The XML design should be prepared quickly.
It is better to spend time building the data than it is on building an XML design.8. The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
Only include as many elements as you need to be clear, not more and not less.9. XML documents shall be easy to create.
XML
is intended to not require a special editor or tool to create. And in
fact, most XML documents can be edited in a text editor like Notepad or
TextEdit.10. Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.
When
you're creating XML element names, first_name is better than fname
because it's clearer and more human readable. While you do want to keep
elements names short, the shortness should not be at the sacrifice of
human-readability