xml from ed

Ben Pfaff pfaffben@msu.edu
27 Jul 2001 13:49:30 -0400


Edward Glowacki <glowack2@msu.edu> writes:

> This whole
> XML thing sounds like a nice idea, but thusfar it doesn't seem very
> user friendly... =P

Did you see the Lisp user's rant about XML on a.h.b-o-u the other
day?  "No", you say?  Well here you go:

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Subject: Re: So, where's the "Javadoc" for COMMON Lisp? 
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp

* Steve Long <stevelong@isomedia.com>
> Any ideas for implementing this functionality in the XML world, a
> direction that much of the sofware world seems to be heading?

  What on _earth_ can XML possibly have to offer people who are not already
  completely out of their mind?  The interesting thing is to use Common
  Lisp to deal with that abomination so that some people can see how dumb
  SGML and HTML and XML really are and how it should have been done.  There
  is _zero_ point in moving from Common Lisp to XML.  Making a connection
  from CL to XML that is not pure kindness to the losers is _dangerous_.
  Even as a data notation, CL is already at least a decade ahead of XML.
  SGML and XML are good ideas if you were comatose when you designed your
  software to begin with, but _only_ then.  We should approach XML people
  with a "good, good, you figured out that a uniform syntax has benefits --
  how many _more_ years of pain and suffering and agonizing over lost data
  before you figure out that types, read-write consistencey, _intelligent_
  in-memory representation, programmable syntax, and macros have benefits,
  too?"  Sigh!  These folks are coming from a third-world country as far as
  software goes, and absolutely anything that carries symptoms of IQ above
  freezing (Fahrenheit, just like the room temperature), is better than
  their astonishingly retarded data formats.  That _includes_ most of the
  dreadfully "look, ma, I can also reinvent the wheel, with no hands!" Unix
  "configuration file" syntaxes, log file formats, etc, etc.  My God, it is
  so amazingly mindless!  Speaking of which, if anyone needs evidence that
  there is _no_ god, that whatever god was here has _left_ the planet, etc,
  take a look at the fantastic mess that people arrange for themselves in
  data formats and what they actually consider improvements!  Clearly, this
  could not have taken place if anyone, I mean _anyone_, had had a grand
  plan.  Even a god who were responsible for the platypus would have done
  better than XML.

  Now, what did you have in mind?
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