xml-dev - Re: SGML, XML and SML

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

Don Park wrote:
> 
> I don't understand what 'this' is.  Are you suggesting that SML should
> be abandoned in favor of S-expressions or are you saying that S-expressions
> didn't fly so SML won't either?

Here's what I'm saying:

 * XML has lots of stuff that most of these applications do NOT need.
 * XML *lacks* some important things that these applications DO need,
the most important being a structured property syntax

A language with neither of these flaws could be designed in a week and a
parser for it could be written in half a day in any language. Writing
such a parser would be not that much more work than strapping in an XML
parser -- actually it would be less if there is no parser that meets
your needs. Such a language could be DOM-compatible, XPath-compatible,
XSLT compatible and so forth if it was designed to be.

Therefore, why force unminimized angle brackets to do something that
they are weak at? Just to prove the point that every data type in the
universe can have a single syntax?

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
Bart: Dad, do I really have to brush my teeth?
Homer: No, but at least wash your mouth out with soda.



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