Re: LOUT and XML

[Ian Carr-de Avelon]

Michael Piotrowski <address@hidden> wrote:
>Ian Carr-de Avelon <address@hidden> writes:
>> Michael Piotrowski <address@hidden> wrote:
>It is certainly true that having a common syntax may, for various
>reasons, be a good thing.
We agree on this then.

>  However, my impression is that many people
>asking for Lout to use XML syntax expect it to somehow become
>descriptive, so that you can, for example, (sensibly) convert Lout to
>DocBook.  That's what I tried to address with my comment.
I doubt that anyone who has got beond "XML means files called foo.xml"
has not realised that the conversions go in one direction only.  

>> How many of us would start looking at the postscript or pdf output
>> if things start going wrong? it is only a different language, so
>> according to your argumant we should not think twice.
>
>I don't understand your point here, sorry.  What are you trying to
>say?
Simply that in reading:
/ch-image{ch-data
dup type /stringtype ne{ctr get /ctr ctr 1 add N}if}B
your first problem is that you have no idea which characters and words
have a meaning in the language and which must be defined elsewhere.
XML as a universal format for human readable machine data really only
rests on the angle brackets, but in giving you one highlighting 
system in your editor it really helps if you are going to work with
>=5 industry standards for input and >=3 formats for output.

>I might be wrong, of course.  If Lout with angle brackets is really
>needed, one could easily write a very short Perl script that does
>something like
>
>   s/<([-_.:[:alpha:]])+>/@\1{/g;
>   s/</.+>/}/g;
>
>to demonstrate the value of the approach.  If this proves to be
>popular, it then wouldn't be to hard to take Lout (rembember, it's
>under the GPL), and change its syntax.
This sounds like the way to go to me.
Get the conversion scripts for both directions writen, give the new
format a name: <lout>, loutXML? publicise it and accept questions to
the list in both formats, and lout can be the number one XML formating
system in no time.
Any of us could do it, but you need one accepted and blessed version
to give it the neccessary intertia to be unstopable.
Yours
Ian