3 ms·

I think the confusion here (not yours specifically) is that his actual <|> syntax resolves this ambiguity and his informal CL translation does not. You are cor

I think the confusion here (not yours specifically) is that his actual <|> syntax resolves this ambiguity and his informal CL translation does not. You are correct that: <foo bar="zot">quux</foo> => (foo (bar "zot")) <foo><bar>zot</bar></foo> => (foo (bar "zot")) Is an ambiguity. However in his <|> syntax: <foo bar="zot">quux</foo> => <foo <bar | "zot">> <foo><bar>zot</bar></foo> => <foo | <bar | "zot">> What about, say: <foo bar="zot">quux</foo> as (foo (bar "zot") (data "quux")) Or any other keyword which you could reserve as being the special "non-meta" data? (foo (bar "zot")) is then unambiguously <foo bar="zot"/> (foo (data (bar "zot"))) is then <foo><bar>zot</bar></foo> I'm not sure whose side I'm on by proposing this. I'd be interested to know.

lisper 11y ago
Sure, there are lots of ways of restoring the lost information. My point is just that Erik opens by claiming emphatically (AFAICT -- people seem to disagree about this) that this information SHOULD NOT be restored, that it is WRONG to try to make a syntactic distinction between data and metadata in a markup language: "Whether something is an attribute or element is _completely_ arbitrary." THAT is the point on which he is (IMHO) clearly wrong. (He's wrong about a bunch of other things too, but that's the most serious mistake.) EDIT: Here is Erik doubling down on his position: "I have a simple way to get rid of the annoying verbosity of these stupid languages while _retaining_ that mistake [sic] between attribute values and elements"
- lamacase 11y ago
  I interpreted him as saying (and it sounds like you may have as well?) that this distinction SHOULD NOT be ENCODED in XML or S-Expression or whatever data serialization/markup syntax you invent. He does not appear to make an argument as to why he believes this, so I'd say his claim is at worst unsubstantiated. I find it hard to believe that there's a objectively correct decision about the number of semantic concepts that "should" be encoded in a syntax, but I can understand why lisp enthusiasts would be on the 'closer-to-none end of that spectrum. I'd be interested to hear why you think it's so essential. The only argument I'm really aware of is compatibility with existing markup languages. I would guess that a markup syntax that is as simple and regular (ie. syntactically consistent) as possible would be the easiest to operate on algorithmically. I would also guess that this would make it easier to build, on top of this language, tools which present the content in various ways that are easier to read/write/manually-manipulate if you so desired. Actually, his example syntax makes this argument implicitly. He is suggesting that his tools are significantly easier to implement by working with plain S-Expressions, and that they can easily be mapped to a 'write-friendly markup language that is isomorphic to XML anyway. I make no claims about the quality of his presentation or the clarity of his arguments.

lisper 11y ago

Sure, there are lots of ways of restoring the lost information. My point is just that Erik opens by claiming emphatically (AFAICT -- people seem to disagree about this) that this information SHOULD NOT be restored, that it is WRONG to try to make a syntactic distinction between data and metadata in a markup language: "Whether something is an attribute or element is _completely_ arbitrary." THAT is the point on which he is (IMHO) clearly wrong. (He's wrong about a bunch of other things too, but that's the most serious mistake.) EDIT: Here is Erik doubling down on his position: "I have a simple way to get rid of the annoying verbosity of these stupid languages while _retaining_ that mistake [sic] between attribute values and elements"

lamacase 11y ago
I interpreted him as saying (and it sounds like you may have as well?) that this distinction SHOULD NOT be ENCODED in XML or S-Expression or whatever data serialization/markup syntax you invent. He does not appear to make an argument as to why he believes this, so I'd say his claim is at worst unsubstantiated. I find it hard to believe that there's a objectively correct decision about the number of semantic concepts that "should" be encoded in a syntax, but I can understand why lisp enthusiasts would be on the 'closer-to-none end of that spectrum. I'd be interested to hear why you think it's so essential. The only argument I'm really aware of is compatibility with existing markup languages. I would guess that a markup syntax that is as simple and regular (ie. syntactically consistent) as possible would be the easiest to operate on algorithmically. I would also guess that this would make it easier to build, on top of this language, tools which present the content in various ways that are easier to read/write/manually-manipulate if you so desired. Actually, his example syntax makes this argument implicitly. He is suggesting that his tools are significantly easier to implement by working with plain S-Expressions, and that they can easily be mapped to a 'write-friendly markup language that is isomorphic to XML anyway. I make no claims about the quality of his presentation or the clarity of his arguments.