- From: Sean Mc Grath <sean@digitome.com>
- Date: Fri, 04 Jul 1997 09:17:52 +0100
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
[Paul Prescod] >The ethos of XML is simplicity >married to expressive power, otherwise why bother? HTML is already >simple. If it isn't simple enough we could roll it back to HTML 2.0. > Expressive power in any syntax/semantic melange comes in a variety of forms. Expressive power can be increased by adding extra *syntactic* constructs. This has been the SGML way. New concept -> new syntactic construct -> new parser. On the other hand, expressive power can be increased by allowing *existing* syntactic/semantic constructs to be combined. This, as I understand it, is more like the XML way. In programming languages the spectrum has something like Scheme on one end and Ada on the other. Scheme has remarkably few syntactic constructs and yet packs a hell of a powerful punch. Less is more == Scheme == XML == Parser in a week == lightweigth == web friendly This was trashed out at length some weeks ago and I argued against PE's as they are a subtle blend of syntax and semantics. As I understand the decision they are now purely syntactic constructs for WF. Sounds good to me. Sean Sean Mc Grath sean@digitome.com Digitome Electronic Publishing http://www.digitome.com
Received on Friday, 4 July 1997 04:43:29 UTC