- From: Sheila Thomson <discuss@bluegumtree.com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:54:23 +0100
- To: public-ixml@w3.org
- Message-ID: <20953d82-cb35-47dd-bf1c-7791023c7bd3@bluegumtree.com>
Hi Wendell,
Coffeepot already supports options to output Json
(https://docs.nineml.org/current/coffeepot/bk02ch08.html#output-json) or
CSV (https://docs.nineml.org/current/coffeepot/bk02ch08.html#output-csv)
as well as XML. (I haven't checked any of the other processors.)
Sheila
On 2026-08-19 12:46, Wendell Piez wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> Thanks for reading, and to Elisa for an amazing job rethreading those
> lost posts. That appears to have required some (human) effort.
>
> I'd like to add as a footnote to Steven's observation (iXML as gateway
> technology) that (as he and we hardly need reminding) XML does not
> have to be scarier than an angle bracket (or a few), and if you want
> your iXML processor to hide those, that can easily be arranged.
>
> While I am not volunteering for more jobs,as part of the propaganda
> effort, maybe "someone" needs to makea black-box demo -- say,a
> two-step XProc that parses something meaningfulusing iXML and emits
> JSON. There are worse ways to design and support a bespoke text-based
> format for your needs, in home and business, and iXML is a fine way to
> specify such a format, irrespective of what kinds of results are
> (sooner or later) produced.
>
> I recently met a guy who was seriously parsing his Markdown using
> home-grown ANTLR-alike grammars written in Rust. (For context: an
> Irish developer transplanted to New Jersey.) I recommended looking
> into Declarative Amsterdam (because what I saw was aiming for an
> entirely declarative layer, not just a tunnel to HTML). This person
> was crazy for Markdown and HTML/CSS but pretty much at sea with
> anything containing an "X". He (or they) needs to be able to find
> their tribe.
>
> Cheers, Wendell
>
>
> Cheers, Wendell
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 19, 2026 at 6:04 AM Steven Pemberton
> <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl> wrote:
>
> Thanks for this great information about ixml at TEI, Elisa.
>
> I see ixml as a possible gateway to XML, and while the name 'XML'
> is poisoned in some communities, 'markup' isn't. So what I'm
> hoping is that people may be tempted by the title to look at the
> program, and see things that are interesting, and decide to come,
> whereas people who think they don't like XML may well not even
> look at the program.
>
> Steven
>
> On Wednesday 19 August 2026 02:52:53 (+02:00), Beshero-Bondar,
> Elisa Eileen wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> Thanks for checking in about missing some of my messages to
> the public-ixml list today! I discovered the problem is on my
> end: Replies to posts from my phone are being sent from my
> gmail address, and not my psu.edu <http://psu.edu> address.
> I've been writing from my phone on a plane this afternoon
> coming home from the TEI conference in Vancouver, and realized
> the problem after I looked up my subscription. I subscribed to
> this list from my university address.
>
> If I was replying to someone, the list is nicely configured to
> make sure they receive my message. Checking the archives
> confirms I've been kind of a "ghost" today:
> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2026Aug/
>
> Now that I'm back on my computer, I think this message will
> post properly, so I'll just (for the record) paste in my few
> messages from the flight today. (I should change my settings
> so this one mirrors the other lists in my life.)
>
> In reply to Wendell's post that starts, 'Dear Norm and list,
> / I am pretty confident that the new humans will reject the
> so-called 'wisdom' of their elders who spurn XML. At least
> some of them.' I wrote about some of those humans from the
> TEI2026 conference last week:
>
> Hi all,
> At the TEI conference last week, I found a lot of people
> asking me what they should know about invisible XML, kind
> of tentatively interested to see if they should take time
> to learn it.
>
> Context: A new grad from my program, Hadleigh Bills,
> presented her project to make a TEI digital edition of the
> Voynich manuscript using invisible XML to convert a very
> regularly formatted but very esoteric transliteration file
> of Voynich into XML, and thence (via XSLT) to TEI, and
> thence (via CETEIcean) to a web edition preserving TEI
> semantics, with IIIF to port in facsimile page images from
> the Beinecke. People were asking us lots of questions to
> learn more— “is it some kind of markdown? Is it regular
> expressions? Etc)
>
> (Hadleigh Bills’ project code with a Readme describing the
> pipeline is here: https://github.com/newtfire/voynichTEI,
> and slides for the TEI conference here:
> https://slides.com/hadleighjae/voynichtei .
> You all might find her invisible XML strategy interesting.
> She learned this eagerly after trying a lot of complicated
> regex replacements in Python. The ixml was a lot cleaner
> and easier to read than the Python string replacements
> she’d been trying.
> )
>
> It is interesting to discuss ixml in the TEI community
> context—these people understand a need to move difficult
> texts into tractable formats, and XML is a shared language
> among TEI people.
>
> In this space, XML and TEI were frequently discussed as a
> format that mediates explicitly among multiple
> technologies in digital environments—between databases ,
> graphs, and publishing tech.
>
> Elisa
>
>
> Then Sheila sent this post, which included: 'Bethan makes a
> good point in relation to "discoverability" - in that if the
> name is changed, it will be important to ensure that there is
> still explicit mention of "IXML"', and I replied:
>
> I agree with Sheila and Bethan on this. Generally I want
> people to start noticing “XML” now and becoming curious
> about interesting new things happening around it. As in,
> look—there’s another event about XML—what’s going on?
>
> I have some hope for well-designed XML as medium for
> transparent and efficient document data and metadata
> exchange as a direct counterpoint to unreadable,
> inaccessible, bloated alternatives used to train and
> augment language models. I look forward to meeting others
> interested in similar work… Could the letters “XML” appear
> to be forward-looking now?
>
> Elisa
>
> Wendell replied to Sheila (probably not seeing my post), the
> message beginning "Hello again, / Sheila makes an excellent
> point that by no means should iXML be downplayed at the iXML
> Symposium (as I think of it), in either marketing materials or
> anywhere else."
>
> To this, I replied briefly,
>
> This phrase sprang to mind, Wendell:
>
> The Invisible XML Symposium: for Markup and Beyond?
>
>
> Then Wendell replied to me the message starting, "Elisa, /
> Just to be clear (in case I misspoke) I don't think "iXML" or
> "Invisible XML" should be in the name of the Symposium."
>
> To this, I replied:
>
> I confess confusion more than hair-splitting. If you’re
> not actively working on or interested in invisible XML,
> what would draw you to register? Wouldn’t you need a lot
> of training workshops for people who come in without any
> background?
>
> Who are you trying to draw by hiding the name? And do you
> think they want to hear papers by people working on
> invisible XML?
>
> Elisa
>
>
> And Wendell responded with the post that begins: "Dear Elisa,
> / I am not suggesting hiding the name so much as naming the
> conference something more general, and not hiding what it's
> about."
>
>
> After that, Bethan noticed all the replies to me and none
> *from* me on the list... I landed in Toronto, got to a hotel,
> and figured out what happened.
>
> At this point, after all the excellent ideas you're all
> sharing, I like the title "International Symposium on
> Invisible Markup". I'm also very much in favor of name
> recognition. And (as I really wanted to share from my first
> post today) I think you may find people interested in
> workshops at the event. The fun thing about invisible XML is
> that you really can get started learning it quickly—it's very
> workshoppable! So an outreach event at such a symposium might
> be a good idea. People in my world are hearing about ixml but
> don't totally understand what it's for yet.
>
> Hope this literally sets our archive in order again!
>
> Elisa
>
> Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD (she/they)
> TEI Technical Council Chair
> Development site: https://newtfire.org
> Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology |
> Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital
> Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Sheila Thomson <discuss@bluegumtree.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 18, 2026 8:06 PM
> *To:* public-ixml@w3.org <public-ixml@w3.org>; Bethan
> Tovey-Walsh <bytheway@linguacelta.com>
> *Subject:* Re: Second International Symposium on Invisible XML
> I received the first message from Elisa but not the second one.
>
> Excellent summary Bethan, thanks.
>
> Sheila
>
>
> On 18 August 2026 23:04:04 BST, Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> <bytheway@linguacelta.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry - a meta question. I appear to be getting only
> Wendell's side of this conversation and not Elisa's - is
> that the same for everyone else, or is my email client
> misbehaving in some newly evil way?
>
> BTW
>
> ****************************************************
>
> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
>
> linguacelta.com <http://linguacelta.com/>
>
> Golygydd | Editor geirfan.cymru <http://geirfan.cymru/>
>
> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg
>
>
>> On 18 Aug 2026, at 22:50, Wendell Piez
>> <wapiez@wendellpiez.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear Elisa,
>>
>> I am not suggesting hiding the name so much as naming the
>> conference something more general, and not hiding what
>> it's about.
>>
>> You raise interesting questions as to who would be
>> interested in a more general "markup": or "structured
>> data" or what-have-you conference or event, but I can't
>> answer that, since we aren't talking about what to name
>> it, but what not to name it. ("iXML".)
>>
>> I also think that if we (the iXML contingent) don't think
>> our papers are interesting or should be interesting to
>> someone who hasn't heard of iXML, or who has not yet
>> heard of it -- we are doing ourselves a disservice.
>>
>> Come to a markup conference. Learn about parsing,
>> structured data, text as interface, code as text, history
>> and principles of markup, iXML. At the Invisible Markup
>> and Parsing Symposium (IMPS) we talk about how to parse
>> our information and what we can do with it. What's so
>> difficult about that? (I'm not suggesting that seriously:
>> it's a throwaway to illustrate the concept.)
>>
>> Of course (whatever the name), I can still submit a paper
>> not XML-focused, can I not? In which any XML is entirely
>> incidental? Or is the symposium really that focused on
>> projects and toolchains enabled by iXML? If the
>> organizing/program committee wants to focus on
>> iXML-enabled toolchains, projects, ideas, there's nothing
>> wrong with that either. My response to Steven (and
>> subsequent explanations) is predicated on the notion that
>> the symposium seeks to be relevant to everyone interested
>> in the the problem space, not just the technology.
>>
>> Cheers, Wendell
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2026 at 5:07 PM Elisa Beshero-Bondar
>> <ebbondar@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I confess confusion more than hair-splitting. If
>> you’re not actively working on or interested in
>> invisible XML, what would draw you to register?
>> Wouldn’t you need a lot of training workshops for
>> people who come in without any background?
>>
>> Who are you trying to draw by hiding the name? And do
>> you think they want to hear papers by people working
>> on invisible XML?
>>
>> Elisa
>>
>>
>> Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD (she/they)
>> Chair, TEI Technical Council
>> Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology
>> | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the
>> Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The
>> Behrend College
>>
>> Typeset by hand on my iPhone
>>
>>> On Aug 18, 2026, at 4:52 PM, Wendell Piez
>>> <wapiez@wendellpiez.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Elisa,
>>>
>>> Just to be clear (in case I misspoke) I don't think
>>> "iXML" or "Invisible XML" should be in the name of
>>> the Symposium.
>>>
>>> This is not at all the same calculus as naming any
>>> other event or organization, FWIW. But for *this*
>>> event, I am trying to second Steven's suggestion
>>> that the focus be implicit, and created by the
>>> participants, not stipulated (and bounded by) the
>>> event's name.
>>>
>>> Thanks for splitting hairs with me!
>>> Cheers, Wendell
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2026 at 4:13 PM Elisa Beshero-Bondar
>>> <ebbondar@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> This phrase sprang to mind, Wendell:
>>>
>>> The Invisible XML Symposium: for Markup and Beyond?
>>>
>>>
>>> Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD (she/they)
>>> Chair, TEI Technical Council
>>> Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and
>>> Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities |
>>> Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn
>>> State Erie, The Behrend College
>>>
>>> Typeset by hand on my iPhone
>>>
>>>> On Aug 18, 2026, at 3:50 PM, Wendell Piez
>>>> <wapiez@wendellpiez.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hello again,
>>>>
>>>> Sheila makes an excellent point that by no
>>>> means should iXML be downplayed at the iXML
>>>> Symposium (as I think of it), in either
>>>> marketing materials or anywhere else.
>>>>
>>>> I am not shy about saying that iXML should be
>>>> at the center. It is more a question of
>>>> messaging who is welcome to come. If someone
>>>> creates an iXML-workalike creating
>>>> S-expressions or curlies, I don't want them to
>>>> think they are outside the bounds of What May
>>>> Be Discussed. Those are really the people that
>>>> need to be there, are they not?
>>>>
>>>> Indeed, if any mention of "The Markup Y" or
>>>> "Declarative Z" must always be appended with
>>>> (hushed voice) "it's an *XML* event" just so
>>>> people feel they are being honest - that would
>>>> be an excellent thing.
>>>>
>>>> Again, I think Balisage has set a good example,
>>>> as its statement of interest is quite broad
>>>> beyond XML, and so does its title. It is
>>>> diminished if you think it was only an XML event.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Wendell
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2026 at 2:52 PM Sheila Thomson
>>>> <discuss@bluegumtree.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I see the merits of both options ("markup"
>>>> or "XML") and have no
>>>> preference either way.
>>>>
>>>> Bethan makes a good point in relation to
>>>> "discoverability" - in that if
>>>> the name is changed, it will be important
>>>> to ensure that there is still
>>>> explicit mention of "IXML" and "invisible
>>>> XML" in promotional material
>>>> and other related comms, to increase the
>>>> odds of it reaching people
>>>> searching for those more commonly used terms.
>>>>
>>>> Sheila
>>>>
>>>> On 18/08/2026 15:01, Bethan Tovey-Walsh wrote:
>>>> > I don't object to the change in
>>>> principle, but currently there are a lot of
>>>> people doing IXML and not a lot of people
>>>> doing "invisible markup". My concern when
>>>> we talked about this for the first
>>>> Symposium was about whether the term
>>>> "invisible markup" really means anything to
>>>> people - whereas we *know* that people are
>>>> talking about and working with IXML.
>>>> >
>>>> > (It does also seem weird to me that
>>>> someone who would be interested in markup
>>>> is *not at all* interested in XML. But I
>>>> have met humans, and "weird" seems to be
>>>> the one thing that they all have in common.)
>>>> >
>>>> > BTW
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> ___________________________________________________
>>>> > Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
>>>> >
>>>> > linguacelta.com <http://linguacelta.com/>
>>>> >
>>>> > Golygydd | Editor geirfan.cymru
>>>> >
>>>> > Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
>>>> >
>>>> >> On 18 Aug 2026, at 14:42, Norm
>>>> Tovey-Walsh <norm@saxonica.com> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Steven Pemberton
>>>> <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl> writes:
>>>> >>> Oh, hey! This XML stuff is actually
>>>> pretty cool!
>>>> >> I love your optimism. Have you met
>>>> humans? :-)
>>>> >>
>>>> >> --
>>>> >> Norm Tovey-Walsh
>>>> >> Saxonica
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ...Wendell Piez... ...wendellpiez.com...
>>>> ...pellucidliterature.org... ...raventracks.org...
>>>> ... xproc.zone... ...github.com/wendellpiez.
>>>> <http://github.com/wendellpiez.>..
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ...Wendell Piez... ...wendellpiez.com...
>>> ...pellucidliterature.org... ...raventracks.org...
>>> ... xproc.zone... ...github.com/wendellpiez.
>>> <http://github.com/wendellpiez.>..
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ...Wendell Piez... ...wendellpiez.com...
>> ...pellucidliterature.org... ...raventracks.org...
>> ... xproc.zone... ...github.com/wendellpiez.
>> <http://github.com/wendellpiez.>..
>
>
>
> --
> ...Wendell Piez... ...wendellpiez.com...
> ...pellucidliterature.org... ...raventracks.org...
> ... xproc.zone... ...github.com/wendellpiez.
> <http://github.com/wendellpiez.>..
Received on Wednesday, 19 August 2026 11:54:36 UTC