Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good language design?

[Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

There are many different syntaxes in XML:

The comment syntax:  <!-- ... -->

The PI syntax:  <? ... ?>

The CDATA section syntax:  <![CDATA[ ... ]>

The DOCTYPE syntax:  <!DOCTYPE ... >

The entity syntaxes:  &amp;  and &#x020; and &#032;

The namespace syntax:  xmlns:foo="..." and <foo:bar>...</foo:bar>

Attribute/value syntax:  x="blah"

The start-tag/end-tag syntax:

<baz>
   <widget>...</widget>
</baz>

Phew! That is a lot of different syntaxes.

Is that good language design to have so many different syntaxes?

Dealing with lots of different syntaxes is hard. For example, I never remember the syntax for CDATA sections (in fact, I had to look it up just now).

Isn't it better language design to have a small number of syntaxes?

/Roger