Christian, On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 17:49:48 +0200, "Christian Langreiter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: [snip] > XML and the XML-related standards are basically a set of > representational > constraints, as is every language. REBOL, when used purely as data > representation language (i.e. without any of its > non-declarative/procedural/functional capabilities), is indeed very > similar > in capabilities to XML.
Indeed. > What lacks, for example, is Unicode, Yes...lack of Unicode support in REBOL is something that I've always found extremely surprising. > but otherwise > you can most easily translate any piece of XML into a REBOL > representation. > "But I can do that as well with Java!", you'll say Actually, I wouldn't say that. Or, at least I wasn't implying that. I was trying to figure out what Carl was saying. I expect that he was musing about a Do-Google-Search function that accepted a single block parameter expressing the Google-API parameters as set-word/value pairs. This presumably isn't much different than a C++/Java method doGoogleSearch(...) except that with REBOL you have the ability to name your parameters, which is something that I *do* like very much. I wasn't looking to compare REBOL to other languages; that's an invitation to a flame-fest, and besides...I do love REBOL. > , and right you are, after > all, that's the point of XML. However - and that is the critical point, > IMO, > if you look at the REBOL representation and the Java object > serialization > side-by-side, you'll see that while the resulting serialization is > practically incomprehensible to humans without tool support, the REBOL > one > is actually simpler than the XML form we started with. True...but I assume that Carl's (imaginary?) Do-Google-Search function is going to produce an XML/SOAP message anyway, given that this is the requirement of the Google API. He's not actually going to drop a REBOL block or object on the line and ship it out to Google, unless he's persuaded Google to provide a REBOL interface. That *would* be cool, but I don't think that's where this is going. So, again, I don't believe we were talking about REBOL as serialization format; his code fragment clearly (to me) looks like a function that accepts a block as a param. Did I misread the code? Certainly he seemed to be comparing some REBOL code to an XML serialization format of a SOAP message. Hence, my confusion and issue about comparing apples and oranges. Carl's messages can sometimes (often?) be a tease, sometimes Yoda-like. I don't think this one is any different. > > <person> > <name>Chris</name> > <age>22</age> > </person> > > person [name "Chris" age 22] > There have been (somewhat misguided) efforts by some to create an even simpler alternative to XML. Some LISP/Schema people (to which REBOL bears a resemblance) dis' XML and yearn for a S-expr solution. You could just as easily create an XML fragment like: <person name="Chris" age="22"/> That doesn't seem worse (to me) than the REBOL syntax. But again, I wasn't looking to be drawn into a comparison game. If anything, I was troubled that Carl might be engaging in a comparison game. > BTW, at http://www.langreiter.com/rebol/google/ you can find a simple > wrapper around some functions the Google API provides, along with > useful > features like result caching. > Cool. I'll check it out. > If you're interested in SOAP, you might also be interested in XML-RPC, > which > is the simpler predecessor of SOAP (and avoids practically all of the > problems SOAP people have to cope with due to the higher level of > complexity). Yes, though XML-RPC has issues of its own. And there are those, under the banner of "REST", that belive this whole XML-RPC / SOAP business is folly; that the HTTP verbs of GET/PUT/POST/DELETE combined with URIs are sufficent and superior. See Paul Prescod's article at: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/06/rest.html > >[snip] > Gavin. -- Gavin McKenzie http://www3.sympatico.ca/gavin.mckenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fastmail.fm -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
