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Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good language design?

• From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2022 12:14:20 +0000

Hi Folks,

There are many different syntaxes in XML:

The comment syntax:  <!-- ... -->

The PI syntax:  <? ... ?>

The CDATA section syntax:  <![CDATA[ ... ]>

The DOCTYPE syntax:  <!DOCTYPE ... >

The entity syntaxes:  &amp;  and &#x020; and &#032;

The namespace syntax:  xmlns:foo="..." and <foo:bar>...</foo:bar>

Attribute/value syntax:  x="blah"

The start-tag/end-tag syntax:

<baz>
   <widget>...</widget>
</baz>

Phew! That is a lot of different syntaxes.

Is that good language design to have so many different syntaxes?

Dealing with lots of different syntaxes is hard. For example, I never remember the syntax for CDATA sections (in fact, I had to look it up just now).

Isn't it better language design to have a small number of syntaxes?

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good language design?
    • From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>
  • Re: Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good languagedesign?
    • From: Damian Morris <damian@moso.com.au>
  • Re: Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good language design?
    • From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
  • Re: Many different syntaxes in XML - is that goodlanguage design?
    • From: Shaun McCance <shaunm@gnome.org>
  • Re: Many different syntaxes in XML - is that good languagedesign?
    • From: Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>