Re: ANN: Etiquette: a protocol construction tool

Peter Seibel wrote:

>Actually where I was hoping to go with my questions was to use
>BEEP--assuming it was using XML for configuration foo--as an example
>of a place where I think Lisp could win big--when something uses nasty
>piles of XML for configuration, a Lisp implementation can hide the XML
>behind a still text-based, still programatic interface (as opposed to
>having to write some whizzy GUI tool to hide the horror) in the form
>of a simple s-exp based config file that maps to the XML or better
>yet, in some cases, a set of macros that allow the user to define
>things much more concisely.
>
Drifting a little further afield of the clump charter...

There seems to be an unspoken assumption in the lisp community that 
s-exprs are inherently superior to xml and most people would really 
prefer to deal with them instead of xml given the chance. I'm not so 
sure this is true. S-exprs certainly beat xml hands down as a 
programming language syntax but as a data syntax it seems like a much 
harder sell. Expat is lightweight enough that it's not that much of a 
burden to carry around and the slightly clunkier syntax is offset by 
familiarity & availability of tools.

It's hard for me to imagine how anybody can see the whole 
xml/xpath/xslt/xquery dogpile as any kind of progress, but for just 
shooting structured data around xml's not *so* bad.

miles