Re: strawman concise syntax (was Re: [OWL-S] new IOPE example #1)

Drew McDermott wrote:

>>[Danny Ayers]
>>But having looked again at the current syntax it is difficult to see how 
>>the same things could be expressed in XML without losing most of the 
>>legibility, ....
>>    
>>
>
>Could you point out some specific points where this would happen?  My
>problem is that I'm not sure what aids or hampers legibility for XML
>users.  
>  
>
Probably worst hit would be the 'operators' like the dataflow 
expressions, "=>" could turn ugly, and typing "-" is pretty lite 
compared with things like rdf:datatype="http://blah/blah#int".

>  
>
>>I do think the Lispishness is likely to be offputting to 
>>developers familiar with e.g. C# for code, SOAP+XML for data. 
>>    
>>
>
>Then we should adopt C# syntax for OWL-S.  It's easy to snicker at
>people who are easily fooled by such superficial features of a
>language, but in the real world the snickerers are not the ones
>laughing all the way to the bank.
>
>  
>
mmm, OWL-S C# ish probably would turn a few heads, I guess it would also 
be Javaish.

Cheers,
Danny.

btw and drifting off topic,  Bill de Hora did a nice post a couple of 
days ago - not talking about syntax, but a good read all the same:
"[a long entry, this, on why a using better languages makes all kinds of 
technical and economic sense. Much talk herein of Lisp, Java, software 
economics, risk, processes, outsourcing, drawing as programming, 
luddites, and perpetual motion too. It ends happily.]"
http://www.dehora.net/journal/archives/000423.html#more

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http://dannyayers.com

Received on Monday, 5 April 2004 16:21:18 UTC