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Re: Lx: compact syntax for XML

• To: Norman Gray <norman@a...>
• Subject: Re: Lx: compact syntax for XML
• From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 07:19:11 +1000
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0404182008230.18514@ptolemy>
• Organization: Zenucom Pty Limited
• References: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0404182008230.18514@ptolemy>
• Reply-to: rjm@z...

this may sound crazy, but every proposal i've seen so far to make xml
quicker/faster seems to rely on getting rid of the end tag.

either binary run length coded formats, or traditional binary number
encodings etc; or more standard termination chars }, ), NUL, etc. anyone
want to propose a syntax with ; as a terminator ? or did i miss that
one.

here's the valuable trick. the end tag must identifiably match the start
tag, and it must be validated that the end tags occur in the correct
order, and the content must be unambiguously NOT an end tag.

any takers?

rick

On Mon, 2004-04-19 at 05:34, Norman Gray wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I'd like to announce a first public release of lx: a compact syntax for XML.
> 
> Yeeees, another one.  But wait:
>     * it's not yet another `binary XML' proposal -- there's no need for that;
>     * it's not intended to take over the world.
> 
> Lx is intended to be useful for folk authoring that specific class of
> documents -- such as XSL stylesheets and RDF serialisations -- which have
> more markup than content.  It's certainly my experience that editing XSL
> stylesheets is more unpleasant than it need be, because the structure
> is hard to see amid all the angle-brackets, end-tags, and endlessly
> repeated namespace prefixes.  Dammit: XSL files just look so _ugly_!
> 
> Here, for example, is the XSL identity transformation in Lx:
> 
>   (lx:namespace ((#f "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"))
>     (stylesheet version: 1.0
>       (template match: "node()|@*"
>         (copy
>           (apply-templates select: [@*|node()])))))
> 
> It looks lispish because that's a well-defined syntax, with good support
> in editors, which closely matches the structure and semantics of XML,
> and XSL in particular.  It's not lisp, however.
> 
> This release consists of the definition of the syntax plus a rather
> lightweight Java package that implements org.xml.sax.XMLReader.  This
> parses the syntax and turns it into a SAX1 or SAX2 stream.  It's GPLed.
> 
> Further details, javadocs, and downloads at
> <http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/distrib/lx/>
> 
> All comments welcome.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Norman
> 

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• References:
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    • From: Norman Gray <norman@a...>

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