> The convention of combining angle brackets with special characters was popularized by PHP. PHP makes use of the <? ?> notation which lends itself to good int

> The convention of combining angle brackets with special characters was popularized by PHP. PHP makes use of the <? ?> notation which lends itself to good integration with text editors, since this is the canonical XML syntax specifically reserved for processing instructions. In this context, because it's not PHP-specific, there would be nothing wrong with using <? ?> for your own language or preprocessor, and I'd rather prefer it for the additional reason that it's easier to find and type a question mark on many kayboard layouts. If I ever attempt to make a web language again, that's what I'd probably stick with. That being said, whatever works for you. It's certainly better than what I came up with in the late nineties when I made my first CGI-based HTML preprocessor... I used to encase everything in $ signs, which looked extremely messy and entertained our web designers to no end because they assumed I was thinking about money a lot. However, at the time, that notation did have some advantages because web layout editors had a lesser chance of destroying it as compared to anything weird with angle brackets :D