Re: Rules & Grammars

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Tim Bray wrote:

> I think we can
> all agree that learning schema languages is hard.

Not at all.

TREX is spectacularly easy to learn.  RELAX is only a bit
harder, and then only if you want to learn all of it.
Hook is probably a snap, although I admit I don't quite
grok its semantics yet.

XML Schema, OTOH: why *that* is so hard that I fear I'm unable.
If you pile rule-based stuff onto the already overreaching
Tower of Babel, you might well get a pile of rubble.

> Once we've
> figured out what we want to do, therefore, fewer schema languages
> are better then more, so that everyone has less to learn.

Why don't we abandon Perl, Python, Java, C, C++, and Lisp and
just go back to writing all programs in PL/I, the last universal
programming language?  That way we'll all have less to learn too.

> So I say to you all: go back in your caves and come out with 
> *one* schema facility that lets me write grammars when I want 
> to and xpath expressions when I want to, and has an elegantly 
> unified syntax.  Then declare victory. 

Is this a troll??!

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein