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---- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Champion" <mc@xegesis.org>
> >Why restrict ourselvs to 'one markup language, that fits
> all' ?
>
> Metcalfe's Law -- the value of a technology rises with the
> square of the number of users. To some extent, costs of
> "forcing square pegs into round holes" are outweighed by
> economies of scale, familiarity, tool availability, etc. For
> example, let's say that I had some data I needed to exchange,
> and YAML or Chunks was just perfect for my needs whereas XML
> was overkill. BUT the folks on the other end would have to
> be educated on what YAML/Chunks is all about (whereas they
> have had XML shoved in their faces for years now), would have
> to be supplied with tools (XML comes "for free" with every
> platform), so it would probably be cheaper and easier to do
> it clumsily with XML than elegantly with YAML/chunks.
>
> XML doesn't restrict the alternatives, but its success makes
> them less and less viable EVEN WHEN THEY ARE BETTER SUITED TO
> A SPECIFIC TASK.
I don't see any problem with that. For a very long time, developers
were spending countless hours, tracing bugs in malloc / free and *ptr++
code ( the smart ones have written plenty of libraries that would
help them in tracing those bugs. Still - pretty much useless activity).
As a result, developers got *so* frustrated with that activity, that
it was very easy for them to understand why garbage collection
( which is not an obvious concept, BTW ) is 'the way to go'.
The more people will hit their heads trying to process XML
with standard APIs - the easeir it would be to make a next
step.
I'm almost sure that somebody tried to make a next step
already ( well, YAML tried for sure ), I'm afraid that we
just don't know.
I'm sorry for repeating myself, but XSLScript ( and XQuery ;-),
is *mixing* non-xml-ish syntax with XML. Of course,
the resulting mix is no longer XML. But it is *very*
handy *because* it is not XML. .
And how do you call the resulting mix ( with < and with { )
Isn't it ... just another markup language? ;-)
Perhaps, XML ++ is already here. There were some
libraries (in C) implemeting garbage collection
long time before Java, but C developers were
too bisy, writing their 'malloc / free' code to
notice them.
> >That would be also the right thing to do!
>
> Worse is better, sigh. Not many people like that fact, but
> even fewer have prospered by betting against it.
Yep.
Rgds.Paul.
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