Re: [xml-dev] Why XML? (fwd)

[zhengyu@attbi.com]

Also the forward slash is definite required to remove any syntactical ambiguity.
"<purchase>
 </purchase>
 <purchase>
 </purchase>", if without "/", becomes identical to

<purchase>
   <purchase>
   </purchase>
</purchase>
----------------------  Forwarded Message:  ---------------------
From:    "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@allette.com.au>
To:      <>
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Why XML?
Date:    Fri, 16 May 2003 12:36:40 +1000

From: "David Megginson" <david@megginson.com>

>  > W3C has violated a first-order principle of language design; that
>  > there should only be one way of doing something, such that everyone
>  > ought to devise the 'same' program to solve the 'same' problem.

> It's clearly a principle rarely put into practice (

Its clearly a completely bogus principle!  In fact, for markup languages
the reverse is true: having more forms makes data capture and modeling 
easier because you can choose the form that requires the least work. 
E.g. (<![CDATA[ ]]> or  &amp; ) and (element or attribute) and
(<x></x> or <x/>) and ( y="z" or y='z'). 

The other bogus principle is that there should only be one syntax for 
everything.
Looking at the triumph of the C family over the LISP family, it is more
likely that people prefer a variety of embedded syntaxes which serve to indicate 
semantics or role graphically. 

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

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