XML is language-oriented, it's like a typical programming notation but without a parsing step (or, rather, with a standard parsing step). It's a very unusual th

XML is language-oriented, it's like a typical programming notation but without a parsing step (or, rather, with a standard parsing step). It's a very unusual thing in this aspect and, I guess, this is the source of all the misunderstanding. E.g. it's very successful in things like layout/UI description, which is naturally language-like. And not that successful in data exchange applications, which is not language-like. (To exchange data with a language-like medium is like integrating programs by constructing their command lines; possible, but way less convenient than by using a library.) If we are to compare it with something it would be Loglan or Lojban, not JSON. The difference is that it's a working and widely used Loglan. Something like this will have to be central to navigate a vast sea of documents, which is what Web was supposed to be. Web has changed quite a bit, but those documents didn't go anywhere and the problem is as acute as ever. More acute, I would say; in 1997 there wasn't that much content there.