xml-dev - Re: XML complexity, namespaces (was WG)

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

Marcelo Cantos wrote:
> 
> The perceived complexity of SGML is not dependent on how complex it is
> to implement an SGML parser, since one already exists.  What matters
> is how complex it is to use.  If one were to insist on considering the
> underlying technology in determining the complexity one would be
> forced to concede that a hello world program written in C is
> enormously complex since it involves compilers, file systems, advanced
> virtual memory architectures, windowing systems, possibly network
> based windowing protocols such as X, virtual machines, OS kernels and
> much, much more, in order to convert the contents of a C source file
> into a pattern of light and dark phosphors on a CRT.

Thank you Marcelo. You've said it wonderfully.

I also want to to point out that I am not excusing SGML's syntactic
complexity nor arguing that it was a good thing. From a PR perspective
alone it was a disaster. If I hadn't had problems to solve that only SGML
could solve I would probably have run away after reading the specification
myself. After all, I'm the guy who avoids Perl because of its same
syntactic complexity and context sensitivity.

I just reject the argument that it was difficult ("inctractable") to
*use*. You fired up Emacs and SP and it was about as difficult to type and
process as XML. That makes me wonder: perhaps there is an Emacs mode that
will make Perl as easy to read as Python.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Perpetually obsolescing and thus losing all data and programs every 10
years (the current pattern) is no way to run an information economy or
a civilization." - Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/10124.html

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