Re: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world

Michael, Norman,

I had no idea something like this does in fact exist, which speaks
volumes tot the appeal and/or marketing of such languages I guess,
considering that at its heyday I was pretty well up-to-date regarding
XML technologies. I'm aware of bpelscript (a non-XML variant of BPEL
in case anyone remembers), for example.

Norman, with hindsight would you venture into something like your lx
project today, or maybe rather try to find a better binding into a
hosting mainstream language of the functional or logic-based variety,
or even JavaScript given that it's pretty much kindof *the* mainstream
language for document processing, just maybe not for batch and
preprint tasks?

Have a nice week,
Marcus
sgml.io

On 5/30/22, Norman Gray <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Michael and Marcus, hello.
>
> On 30 May 2022, at 12:02, Michael Kay wrote:
>
>> Lots of people have invented non-XML syntaxes for XSLT; they have all died
>> a quiet death without achieving any signfiicant adoption.
>
> And I was one such [1], and yes, 'a quiet death' is accurate.
>
> [1] https://nxg.me.uk/dist/lx/
>
>>  I think there are a number of reasons:
>>
>>  (a) the use of XML syntax is off-putting to beginners but no problem at
>> all to experienced users
>
> I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user of XSLT, but I've been I suppose a
> moderately sophisticated user of it for a number of years, since XML was
> new.
>
> I still hate the syntax, and it sets my teeth on edge every time I come near
> it.  The syntax makes it relatively easy to include literal XML elements in
> the output document (and that's a relatively rare requirement, for the uses
> I put it to), but that's the only good thing I can think of to say about the
> choice of XML for the syntax of XSLT.
>
> I appreciate not everyone has this same reaction to it.
>
>>  (b) using a preprocessor makes development a lot more complicated -
>> diagnostics are less helpful, and helpful diagnostics are much more
>> important to developers than pretty syntax.
>
> For that very reason, the Lx thing I put together includes a (Java)
> XMLReader implementation which generates SAX events directly from the input
> syntax, so there was no preprocessing, and the line numbers were correct.
>
> Ah, the loneliness of an itch no-one else has....
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Norman
>
>
> --
> Norman Gray  :  https://nxg.me.uk
> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
>

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