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On Apr 19, 2004, at 9:59 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>
>
> Syntax is NOT trivial. While one can always make a
> computer-science case for a simpler syntax than XML,
> and one can make a case for alternative schema languages,
> one faces a hard sale for moving away from an established
> syntax because syntax is a human user interface acquired
> by habit. Once acquired, it becomes easy to use
Hmm, it's not just computer science that is pressing for simpler
syntaxes. The people experimenting with workarounds to XML's syntax
limitations are doing so because it is either NOT easy to use (e.g. for
human authoring of markup-intensive documents such as stylesheets),
difficult to get the details right (e.g. the RSS-like feeds that can't
seem to get character escaping right, forget to declare HTML entities,
etc.), or find that their customers rebel against the processing
overhead of XML syntax compared to what they are used to. It also
appears that the official W3C schema language never becomes easy to
use, and XML projects are increasingly voting with their feet for RELAX
NG (see http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com today ).
So, syntax is neither trivial to invent or learn, and there is a
constant tension between the needs of the inventors and the users.
"Reinventing the wheel" is fine IMHO if it helps find the usability
problems in the XML standards or new use cases for unrelated standards,
and as long as the underlying base syntax for interchange evolves
slowly and in an orderly manner so that a common denominator is
available when needed.
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