[Coin-discuss] Open-source Modeling Languages

[Kipp Martin]

Hi Brian:

> 
> I don't think that human readability is the major issue.  Rather, it's
> the difficulty of reading/writing correct XML from a program in a
> language like C or Fortran without depending on someone else's
> library.  It's easy to produce an MPS file with a bunch of loops and
> printf's.  Reading an MPS file is somewhat more difficult but not too
> hard.  It wouldn't be nearly as easy to do the same things with the
> corresponding OSiL XML.

Somewhat a matter of opinion. Indeed, I think the creators of XML came 
up with the idea of opening and closing tags to make parsing easier and 
more accurate.   It is easy to write XML files.

I think if you just parse an XML document to check for well-formed it is 
pretty easy. I definitely agree that checking for validity is more 
difficult, but I think worth the extra effort.

Also, it tough to represent general nonlinear programs in MPS.

Cheers,


-- 
Kipp Martin
Professor of Operations Research
and Computing Technology
Graduate School of Business
University of Chicago
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
773-702-7456
kipp.martin at chicagogsb.edu
http://gsbkip.chicagogsb.edu
http://www.coin-or.org