RE: XUL Compact Syntax Study Now Online - Is XML too hard for Aunt Trudie?

Hello Marc,

> I guess (and this goes back to an earlier
> discussion), the "modern"
> programmer expects a few things:
> 
> Intellisense prompting
> Popup help
> Auto completion
> On-the-fly syntax checking
> Debugging (yes, complex xml needs to be debugged,
> IMO)
> 
> In other words, an IDE to make writing xml usable
> and promoting xml to a
> first class citizen in the world of computer
> languages.  That's how I'm
> planning to address the issue of complexity with xml
> programming, rather
> than "dumbing down" the syntax.
> 
> Does that answer the question to some degree?

  Good points. I agree that having a good IDE helps
your productivy and makes discussions about saving a
key stroke here or there pretty pointless.

  I wrote up the compact syntax study after reading up
on the compact (non-XML) syntax for Relax NG - a
schema language for XML. See http://www.relaxng.org
for details.  In case of Relax NG the compact non-XML
syntax clearly beats the XML syntax.

  The .value" syntax is inspired by Tcl/Tk which is in
a sense a XUL toolkit with a non-XML compact syntax
that is out in the wild for more than ten years now. 

  - Gerald


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