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Exactly right. The visual layout matters and indentation that does not
match structure causes confusion. Tagged text is not bad for machine
processing (marginally bit slower than lisp-like syntax a would guess) but
terrible to look at. The idea
of matching the opening and closing with a name has merrit because you can
visually match the open and close of a tag. The problem is that the tagging
is so verbose the context is often lost as ones eye moves around the screen
-- you can't see the forest for the trees.
Indentation adds to human comprehension. Syntactic decoration largely
decreases human comprehension.
Future generations will thank us for adopting a standard interchange format
(XML) and curse us for its size and difficulty to read.
Tagged text is great for machine-generated files which humans only have
occasional need to look at, which I guess is the use-case for XML.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 10:38 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and
> easierto author) XML
>
> Parsing theory and human capabilities aren't always a good
> match. There
> are, of course, lots of tools that deal with simplifying
> these problems...
>
> Simon St.Laurent
> "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue
>
>
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