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RE: Lx: compact syntax for XML

• To: Bob Wyman <bob@w...>
• Subject: RE: Lx: compact syntax for XML
• From: Norman Gray <norman@a...>
• Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 12:16:04 +0100 (BST)
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <007301c42592$5531b370$650aa8c0@BOBDEV>
• References: <007301c42592$5531b370$650aa8c0@BOBDEV>

Bob,

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Bob Wyman wrote:

> 	If you replace your parenthesis with curly braces, what you
> would have is pretty close to the International Standard ASN.1 "Value
> Notation" that was standardized back in the 80's.

Fair enough.  So how do I turn ASN.1 into a SAX event stream so that I
can read and write legible XSL using it?

> 	My personal feeling is that we should accept XML as it is for
> text-based interchange.

I entirely agree.  If you want to interchange text between machines, or
between applications, there's little can beat instance-syntax.  If you
want to interchange markup-rich XML between the screen and your head,
however, instance syntax is a bit of a disaster.

> (i.e. I'm not saying that what you've done isn't "good". I'm just
> saying that it wouldn't be good to get it widely adopted.)

Thanks, but I don't think I'm suggesting that this be `widely adopted',
just that it is useful for a certain category of authors.  ASN.1-to-SAX
would probably be equally useful.

An aside: Alongside the interchange point of view that says XML is all
about syntax, is another one, which says the point is SAX streams,
DOM structures, groves, and all.  From this perspective, it doesn't
matter what you type as long as it's turned into the right structures
reasonably easily.  I'm more aligned with this point of view; thus an
XSL script is a sequence of SAX events -- how you generate them is your
own business.  _That's_ what's clever about XML.

All the best,

Norman


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norman Gray                        http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/
Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK     norman@a...

• References:
  • RE: Lx: compact syntax for XML
    • From: "Bob Wyman" <bob@w...>

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