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Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:
> > A lot of it also has to do with simplicity, both perceived and
> > actual. S-expressions are not simple, at least not to the man on the
> > street.
>
> And XML is?
At least perceived to be simpler than S-expressions.
> S-expressions are probably easier to write tools for, and
> as descriptive as XML.
That might be, but they're harder to approach in the first place. I
admit to being thoroughly ignorant of S-expressions, but when I looked
at a few examples on the Web, my reaction was, "Oh, this looks like a
programming language. I wonder how you use it?"
On the other hand, when I first looked at XML (or, to be fair, HTML,
which was my first markup language), I had no such problems. It was very
easy to read and, because of the tags (which, of course, aren't
self-describing ;) guess at what would happen when you fed it to a
browser.
The simplicity may be deceptive, but it helps suck in the man on the
street.
> Of course, XML wins because the tools already
> exist...
Yep, due in no small part to lots of us being sucked in by apparent
simplicity :)
-- Ron
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