From: Phillip Gawlowski Date: 2011-06-26T08:04:51+09:00 Subject: Re: SPDX (and the glazing of ones eyes) On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 11:52 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: > > On the other hand, disk space sometimes serves well as a rule of thumb > for determining human readability -- where the more space it takes up > relative to the actual data it contains, the harder it is likely to be > for a human to make sense of it in a text file. Not when I'm using a computer for data storage and retrieval. Calling a data-format "human readable" is a nice piece of marketing, but is worthless as a feature: Flat text always lacks the ability to visualize data in an easy manner, something a computer program can provide with ease (not to mention the side effects of easy search). That's why we use diagrams to present statistics, for example: A table can present numerical data, too, but a chart or diagram is much faster to digest, no reading required. Just for laughs, here's the first record of US Census 2010 data for the state of Mississippi, delivered as plain text: DPST,MS,000,01,0000001,2967297,210956,205672,208248,224619,210894,199082,188171,187368,187579,208369,208607,186569,160756,120523,93946,69876,51703,44359,1441240,107465,105042,106606,114145,105433,98610,92461,91364,91664,101271,100994,89321,77111,56200,42228,28913,19366,13046,1526057,103491,100630,101642,110474,105461,100472,95710,96004,95915,107098,107613,97248,83645,64323,51718,40963,32337,31313,36.0,34.5,37.5,2299852,1100634,1199218,2211742,1055477,1156265,2072004,985147,1086857,473309,204243,269066,380407,159753,220654,2967297,2933190,1754684,1098385,15030,25742,5494,4474,3562,807,1537,7025,2843,1187,252,560,135,240,38162,34107,6714,4205,11088,3715,1782807,1115801,25910,32560,2776,44114,2967297,81481,52459,5888,2063,21071,2885816,2967297,81481,32397,4873,1185,265,239,36334,6188,2885816,1722287,1093512,13845,25477,948,1828,27919,2967297,2875333,1115768,506633,880481,620956,238272,119879,21751,134179,10837,5334,63270,91964,55135,40253,14882,36829,18760,18069,1115768,770266,336280,506633,198257,57661,26355,205972,111668,345502,293807,133519,30324,160288,75845,399211,279605,2.58,3.11,1274719,1115768,158951,44735,1920,16886,4915,28867,61628,2.1,11.6,1115768,777073,338695,2017902,857431,2.60,2.53 That's a nice and concise 1212 bytes, isn't it? ;) -- Phillip Gawlowski A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start, and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.                -- Leibniz