icermann

There are (at least) two problems to solve. The first is to anonymously verify properties about the user (e.g. age) and the second is to only allow the legitimate person verify themself.

An national electronic id would provide users with the possibility to verify their age, that they are a physical person and so on, but in the basic case it gives their identity away to any system they use. Letting someone else use your id-card is in many countries illegal and comes with possible negative consequences. Share access to my e-id would allow them to access my bank account, take loans in my name, file for tax returns and a whole bunch of other stuff. So: e-id is not anonymous but usually kept from unauthorized use.

One solves the anonymity part. Is the document in the encrypted blob accessible by the user? Can my identity be shared with websites? Basically: what stops someone from sharing their One passkey? What stops me from letting my AI agents use it, share it with my younger cousin or sell it online?

MS Office and Open-/LibreOffice are using zipped xml files (e.g. .docx, .xlsx and .odt). Svg vector graphics is xml, the x in ajax stands for xml (although replaced by json by now). SOAP (probably counts as the predecessor of REST) is xml-based.

XML was definitely popular in the "well used" sense. How popular it was in the "well liked" sense can maybe be up for debate, but it was the best tool for the job at the time for alot of use cases.

It's explained on the web page

"After ten years in print, our publisher decided against further printings and has reverted the rights to us. We have published Elements of Programming in two forms: a free PDF and a no-markup paperback."

Maybe I didn't make myself clear, but the image in the article looks like it could have made both one and two passes through a Xerox machine before it ended up in the paper.