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By now I shouldn't be, but I'm always a little surprised when people come to the conclusion that the best way to represent HTML is JSON or Javascript (or anythi

by jmull 6y ago

By now I shouldn't be, but I'm always a little surprised when people come to the conclusion that the best way to represent HTML is JSON or Javascript (or anything but HTML).

Risord 6y ago
Why so? In web world we represent most of our non-UI structural data in JSON. HTML is also structural data but what makes it so special that serialization format is needed? Or why won't we represent any abstract business data as HTML even if it would have similiar structure? Therefore I think it's very understandable why people come to that conclusion so often.
throwaway894345 6y ago
Why is XML a better way to represent HTML than any other hierarchical data representation language? “JSON doesn’t have Multiline strings” would be a good argument, but there are lots of good reasons that XML is a bad format (overly verbose, overly complicated, parsers frequently have security vulnerabilities, etc etc).
- monadic2 6y ago
  Element attributes are awkward to express in JSON, at the very least. Maybe if the markup language was originally designed around json it would be a more natural fit.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I think this is fine: { “type”: “div”, “style”: “...”, “children”: [ ... ] } If you really want to treat attributes specially you could put them under an “attributes” key: { “type”: “div”, “attributes”: {“style”: “...”}, “children”: [ ... ] }
slmjkdbtl 6y ago
for people who claim this most of the time another goal is having "programmable components". also there can always be ergonomic/stylistic improvements like pug
leontrolski 6y ago
Hi, author here. I talked about this in more length here https://leontrolski.github.io/dom-syntax.html https://leontrolski.github.io/dom-syntax.html and to some extent here https://leontrolski.github.io/33-line-react-thoughts.html https://leontrolski.github.io/33-line-react-thoughts.html. There was also some discussion on the former here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142300

by jmull 6y ago

By now I shouldn't be, but I'm always a little surprised when people come to the conclusion that the best way to represent HTML is JSON or Javascript (or anything but HTML).

Risord 6y ago

Why so? In web world we represent most of our non-UI structural data in JSON. HTML is also structural data but what makes it so special that serialization format is needed? Or why won't we represent any abstract business data as HTML even if it would have similiar structure? Therefore I think it's very understandable why people come to that conclusion so often.

throwaway894345 6y ago

Why is XML a better way to represent HTML than any other hierarchical data representation language? “JSON doesn’t have Multiline strings” would be a good argument, but there are lots of good reasons that XML is a bad format (overly verbose, overly complicated, parsers frequently have security vulnerabilities, etc etc).

monadic2 6y ago
Element attributes are awkward to express in JSON, at the very least. Maybe if the markup language was originally designed around json it would be a more natural fit.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I think this is fine: { “type”: “div”, “style”: “...”, “children”: [ ... ] } If you really want to treat attributes specially you could put them under an “attributes” key: { “type”: “div”, “attributes”: {“style”: “...”}, “children”: [ ... ] }

slmjkdbtl 6y ago

for people who claim this most of the time another goal is having "programmable components". also there can always be ergonomic/stylistic improvements like pug

leontrolski 6y ago

Hi, author here. I talked about this in more length here https://leontrolski.github.io/dom-syntax.html https://leontrolski.github.io/dom-syntax.html and to some extent here https://leontrolski.github.io/33-line-react-thoughts.html https://leontrolski.github.io/33-line-react-thoughts.html. There was also some discussion on the former here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142300