Having trouble finding a word in multiple files

[Peter Flynn]

On 18/06/2020 17:15, Chris Green wrote:
[...]
> It's just horrible!  Why people think that 'human readable' includes
> things like XML I cannot imagine.  

I don't have a problem in reading <title>Romeo and Juliet</title>

If people have a problem understanding it, I don't think the problem 
lies in the markup, any more than \title{Romeo and Juliet} or
.t Romeo and Juliet or ## Romeo and Juliet.

> It's about the most unreadable
> stuff there is,

No, JSON wins that prize.

> it's far, far worse than just about every programming language and
> some of them are pretty bad.  The only less readable thing I can
> think of is Regular Expressions and they're not supposed to be
> readable.

I think you may have been looking at some very strange uses of XML if 
you have come away with that impression. People have done some truly 
weird stuff with pointy brackets that borders on fantasy or 
wish-fulfilment :-)

> XML is (maybe) good for machines to read and write but it's hopeless
> as a way for *us* to communicate with machines. 

Absolutely. I sincerely hope no-one is trying to do that. My clients use 
it to communicate with people in the future, and for the most part 
neither end of the transaction sees or is even aware of the XML under 
the surface, only the occasional document engineer maintaining the 
systems. An author should certainly never see markup unless they are 
trying to do something very special or unusual, or have some curious 
liking for seeing strange characters in their text.

> There are far easier (and still machine readable) formats.

Lots, but they are intended for different purposes. If I'm writing a 
novel, I don't consider CSV or JSON as a useful file format.

P