On Oct 23, 2010, at 7:10 PM, Néstor Boscán wrote: > > XML is one of the most widespread and flexible languages out there, accept > it, move on.
XML is not a language, it is merely a way of specifying structured data. To the extent that your structured data does or does not have control structures, internal data structures, standard procedural/functional manipulations, etc., _then_ you have or have not a language. My contention (one of them) has always been that XML's syntax is poorly suited for human understanding of complex structures. And in defense, I still maintain that if XML were so great at this stuff, people would be writing new languages in XML, forcing programmers to program in XML...which hasn't happened. There's one language I'm aware of which uses XML for its syntax (can't remember the name), and it seems to have sunk from sight. A _huge_ amount of work goes into grammars and parsers when languages are being defined. This is no accident. A good grammar (language design) can make all the difference between a language that will be widely used, and one that will hardly be used. I just don't understand why people think that "languages" based on XML are somehow above the fray. Cheers, Ken --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
