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   Re: [xml-dev] XML should NOT be a new programming language

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On 02/03/2002 16:22:36 Niels Peter Strandberg wrote:

>Why do we use XML to validate, manipulate, transform etc. other XML
>documents, fragments?

Because XML sources are easier to process and manipulate.  It's much easier to write an application to modify a set of XSL-T scripts than a set of Java sources.  OK, people may not do this so much right now, but that is mainly because text-based languages make it so hard, and text-based languages are what most people are stuck with at present.

>I want to do my work in Java or another language, not a XML "language"
>like XSLT, XML Schema etc. The XML "languages" contains a lot of noise
>and duplicated information. Just try build a fairly large XSL
>stylesheet, an it will fast be hard to read. My favorite IDE do not
>support manipulating XML documents.

Then  your favourite IDE is a poor choice for this work.  Don't be afraid to admit that.  As a long time Emacs user, I now freely admit that I don't think text editors are a good way to edit XML, XSL-T, etc.  Really, the syntaxes we have for C, C++, Java, Python, etc. are the syntaxes you get when people use text editors, and approach life as though text editors are the be-all and end-all of editing.  There isn't a problem with XSL-T having an XML syntax, unless you insist on using a text editor to edit it.  I mean, you can use one if you want, but of course you will end up feeling like you need to complain to somebody.

>We have Java, C++ etc. We have if-else, while, switch etc. We can do
>classes, compile ......... We don't we use them??

As above, you lose the ability to easily parse and manipulate the sources.  I can't think of a good reason for making the code sources so much harder to parse and manipulate than the data.

>I want XML in Java!

I want my Java in XML.  I've asked Sun folks about this in the past, but not enough of them use decent XML editors, so they haven't yet taken it seriously.  It would make it much easier to produce custom Javadoc than writing a Doclets, while also providing more information than the Doclet API provides.

     Cheers,
          Tony.
========
Anthony B. Coates
XML Architect
Chief Technology Office
Reuters Plc, London.
Tony.Coates@reuters.com
========



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