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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Improving XML desing?
<juanrgonzaleza@c...> wrote:
> In
>
> [http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2006/04/canonml-markup-
> language-beyond-tex-xml.html]
>
> i presented some basic thoughts on CanonML, a markup language
> beyond TeX,
> XML, and alternatives as liminal, GODDAG, SGML concur, and others.
> The new
> approach is clearly inspired in SXML.
Many people have already commented that s-expressions are more
concise than XML. The standard rebuttal is that with deeply embedded
tree structures it is virtually impossible to visually locate the end
tag and therefore know which element ends where. Therefore, for
trivial examples s-expressions are more readable, whereas for more
complex examples XML is much more readable. CanonML appears to be yet
another s-expression language, with confusing additional syntax that
appears to serve no purpose (such as double colons), redundant
duplication of forms ([::x] versus \x). It introduces not only the
above problem but also
- confusion over whether whitespace is part of the text content or
the markup (a step backward from SXML)
- lack of processing instruction mechanism
- lack of comment mechanism
- lack of character encoding mechanism
- lack of reusable entity mechanism
- lack of mechanism for modularity of documents (within different
resources)
- lack of differentiation between unordered and ordered properties
(XML attributes vs. child elements)
> Some of technical points of CanonML are beyond XML (i mean if one wait
> backward compatibility with XML 1.0-1.1), but other points could be
> considered for discussion on a future XML specification.
Not with your current proposal. The only advantage I can see to your
language is that it may be slightly more readable for some small
class of trivial documents. Now let's consider a more reasonable
example:
<math xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML'>
<mrow>
<mo fence='true'>∥</mo>
<mrow>
<msup>
<mi mathvariant='bold'>v</mi>
<mi>L</mi>
</msup>
<mo>-</mo>
<msubsup>
<mi mathvariant='bold'>w</mi>
<msup>
<mi>c</mi>
<mi>L</mi>
</msup>
<mi>L</mi>
</msubsup>
</mrow>
<mo fence='true'>∥</mo>
<mo>≤</mo>
<mo fence='true'>∥</mo>
<mrow>
<msup>
<mi mathvariant='bold'>v</mi>
<mi>L</mi>
</msup>
<mo>-</mo>
<msubsup>
<mi mathvariant='bold'>w</mi>
<mi>i</mi>
<mi>L</mi>
</msubsup>
</mrow>
<mo fence='true'>∥</mo>
<mo>∀</mo>
<mi>i</mi>
</mrow>
</math>
Let's try this in CanonML:
[::math [@ [::xmlns http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML]] [::mrow
[::mo [@ [::fence true]] â?¥] [::mrow [::msup [::mi [@ [::mathvariant
bold]] v] [::mi L]] [::mo -] [::msubsup [::mi [@ [::mathvariant
bold]] w] [::msup [::mi c] [::mi L]] [:mi L]]] [::mo [@ [::fence
true]] â?¥] [::mo â?¤] [::mo [@ [::fence true]] â?¥] [::mrow [::msup
[::mi [@ [::mathvariant bold]] v] [::mi L]] [:mo -] [:msubsup [::mi
[@ [:mathvariant bold]] w] [::mi i] [::mi L]]] [::mo [@ [::fence
true]] â?¥] [::mo â??] [::mi i]]]
Shorter, yes. But more readable? I know which one I'd prefer to debug
the nesting of (and edit using vi over an ssh connection). Where does
the second mrow element end, for instance? The third?
--
ç?¬ Chris Burdess
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
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