On Sun, February 4, 2007 3:57 pm, Stewart Stremler wrote: > I recently ended up looking at XML that had a <section> tag, and > <section> tags could contain other sections. Trying to match up > the </section> with the appropriate opening-tag *sucked* -- same > problem as trying to match up braces, parents, or brackets, only > more difficult.
Yea. Nesting elements of the same name defeats the benefits XML has over Lisp. Tell the author of that XML language that is pretty silly. >> People tell me they handle Lisp parens hell by proper indentation. When >> properly indented, "you don't even see the parens!". > > Also by tools that can match parens. > > Most XML editors don't show you the XML anymore; they transform it into > a hierarchal structure, which is fine, sometimes, but *sucks* if that's > not exactly the view that you need. I don't have a problem with these editors/tools that convert XML to a more agreeable presentation. If there is ever a bug in the editor itself, you are very screwed spending hours trying to debug your XML however. > > [snip] >> It seems that we either have to mandate proper indentation in XML to >> avoid >> need for pointy brackets or accept the difficult readability of pointy >> bracket XML. > > ...or go back to S-Expressions. Hey if you like S-expressions better that's ok. Should people have to use aforementioned tools to fix identation and match up parens or would it be better to just add proper indentation to the spec and not let any XML validate unless indentation is done right? What's wrong with that? All that is is basically "Python with parens". Since there is no good reason to *allow* improper indentation why not *mandate* it then? (I'm personally glad my transmission doesn't let me put the car in reverse gear while on the freeway at 65mph but that's me.) Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
