Re: XML and Lout already work well

[Giovanni Zezza]

Il Wed, 19 Sep 2001 17:52:04 +0100, address@hidden scriveva:

>Everything looking the same is what communication is about. Why do 
>you use the roman alphabet when you could create your own letter 
>shapes?

Yes, I admit it was of some comfort to me looking at English and finding the
same letters I was accustomed to. Yet I had to learn it, and it's still not
so easy for me to write or read it (though I'm trying to do it for some 15
years, I think, by now); and even less easy to understand spoken English or
speak it, in spite of the same roman alphabet (why for the hell do they use
the same letters as Italian if they have all different meanings? why using 5
vowels when they have 11 of them?).
Similarly, it wasn't having to learn a new alphabet that stopped me in
learning Arabic; Arab alphabet, in fact, took me a week or so to be learned.
Then I came to the true work (and gave up). I agree, I wouldn't have lost
that week either if Arabic used roman alphabet: you are right, if that was
the point.

>Giovanni Zezza:
>
>>>I agree that for just the coding of human writen documents for 
>>>printing, Lout's {} is just as good as <>.

It's not me.

>Uniform syntax allows you to use tools that understand that uniform 
>syntax.

Maybe, but the XML affaire is not about syntax, it's just little more than a
lexical maquillage. There are XML notations to write music, and XML
notations to write chemistry, and XML notations to write mathematics, and so
on. Of course they haven't a "uniform syntax"; all they a have is a similar
aesthetic appearance.

>Many tools whose semantics is language independent can be 
>factorised thanks to a uniform syntax.

I can hardly guess what a tool "whose semantics is language independent"
would look like, and whether there are so many of them out around.
The only thing I can figure is something like Jade and dsssl. Great!! you
have a parser and a language you may (or may not) like (dsssl).
But then you can get Lout code, and you have a parser too, and a language
you may (or may not) like as well (C).

And usually Lout is what you would like to get *out* of a tool like Jade.

Ciao.