4 ms·

XML is a document markup language. As in, articles and books n stuff. How in hell is that comparable to anything "Lisp-syntax"?

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
There's plenty of history of s-expression formats for documentation. One example is: https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/tree/master/doc/manual https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/tree/master/doc/manual But, also, there's plenty of uses of XML that are not "artcles and books". For example, Maven's pom.xml and log4j2.xml.
lelanthran 3y ago
Because lisp syntax (s expressions) are a cleaner and terser superset of all markup languages, and even of JSON-like representations. IOW, if you take Lisp expressions, add cosmetic syntactical changes like angle brackets and closing tags, then remove about 90% of functionality and cripple what's left, you'll have XML. Cripple it further and you'll have JSON.
- quonn 3y ago
  What you call crippling is what makes JSON easy to work with and universally adopted.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > What you call crippling is what makes JSON easy to work with and universally adopted. For some specific tasks, certainly. A tool I am developing for myself cripples the input format even more, because the more reduced the input is the easier it is to use for a specific task. Could I have used a more powerful format? Sure, but then a format that allows too much is harder to use (especially when those extra features aren't needed). The scope of the input should match the scope of the problem. I was only pointing out that, at the highest level, the format that allows everything is Lisp s-expressions. Everything else is a less-abled form of s-expressions. Some of those formats would have been best served by simply being s-expressions instead (like XML), while others (like JSON) serve a different purpose and don't need all those extra features.
- jeeeb 3y ago
  > Because lisp syntax (s expressions) are a cleaner and terser superset of all markup languages I don’t really follow this. What makes s-expressions a superset of markup languages? What can’t you express in XML that you can with s-expressions?
kitd 3y ago
Both have ASTs are just a DAG of nodes. The only difference is what they look like in human-readable form, and how people expect to use them.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago

There's plenty of history of s-expression formats for documentation. One example is: https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/tree/master/doc/manual https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/tree/master/doc/manual But, also, there's plenty of uses of XML that are not "artcles and books". For example, Maven's pom.xml and log4j2.xml.

lelanthran 3y ago

Because lisp syntax (s expressions) are a cleaner and terser superset of all markup languages, and even of JSON-like representations. IOW, if you take Lisp expressions, add cosmetic syntactical changes like angle brackets and closing tags, then remove about 90% of functionality and cripple what's left, you'll have XML. Cripple it further and you'll have JSON.

quonn 3y ago
What you call crippling is what makes JSON easy to work with and universally adopted.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > What you call crippling is what makes JSON easy to work with and universally adopted. For some specific tasks, certainly. A tool I am developing for myself cripples the input format even more, because the more reduced the input is the easier it is to use for a specific task. Could I have used a more powerful format? Sure, but then a format that allows too much is harder to use (especially when those extra features aren't needed). The scope of the input should match the scope of the problem. I was only pointing out that, at the highest level, the format that allows everything is Lisp s-expressions. Everything else is a less-abled form of s-expressions. Some of those formats would have been best served by simply being s-expressions instead (like XML), while others (like JSON) serve a different purpose and don't need all those extra features.
jeeeb 3y ago
> Because lisp syntax (s expressions) are a cleaner and terser superset of all markup languages I don’t really follow this. What makes s-expressions a superset of markup languages? What can’t you express in XML that you can with s-expressions?

kitd 3y ago

Both have ASTs are just a DAG of nodes. The only difference is what they look like in human-readable form, and how people expect to use them.