Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: documentation as info

[Tupshin Harper]

Tom Lord wrote:

>       miles:
>
>       > My problem with xml/sgml is as a human-edited source
>       > language, i.e., what the tla docs are.
>
> They're also just the _wrong_ slice across a complex,
> multi-dimensional design space, but that's _much_ harder to explain.
> So, yes, I hope your kind of front-line arguments prevail but, behind
> those.....
>  
Whether it's the right or wrong slice depends completely on how you 
define the multi-dimensional design space.

> Give me some abstract data type standards to start with (and, no, I
> don't mean DOM -- more like a set of lisp types).
I (at least partly) agree. DOM certainly isn't it. It's just an API to 
the structural and content information already present in the XML. XML 
Schema (XSD) does go part of the way to addessing this by defining a 
handful of string, numeric, data/time, and some other miscellaneous 
types, as well as more complex types that generally refer to some 
combination of elements, attributes, etc.
http://www.w3schools.com/schema/

>  And give me a
> freakin' language, not DTDs and Schema (geeze, only one letter off).
> We can build out the read/write variations from there.
>  
Why have the complexity of a full programming language when the task is 
simply to define a specific data representation? Unnecessary complexity.

> But XMLers won't get that at all.   They aren't even in the same city
> as the ballpark.  And their audience?  Pheh.
>  
Two questions:
* What tasks would you find easier or more palatable if XML had more 
lisp-like abstract data types and a scheme-like validation language?
* Any opinion about SXML?

-Tupshin