Quasi-Literals & XML Mark S. Miller (markm@caplet.com)
Wed, 10 May 2000 09:24:24 -0700

Well, after my "Subversive Innovation" message, you can't say I didn't warn you.

For those who can stand it,
http://www.erights.org/elang/grammar/quasi-xml.html is my draft proposal for how to make E play with XML. This proposal would have E use DOM trees as its "universal" parse-tree data structure, in much the same way Lisp uses S-Expressions or Prolog uses term trees. The other two choices are technically superior, but XML/DOM trees seem adequate.

Or, as we use to ask at Agorics when evaluating the latest standards epidemic,

"Yes it's brain-damaged. But is it fatally brain-damaged?"

I think the answer for XML is no, so we should adopt it as our S-Expression "equivalent". My core strategy is "pick your battles". Fighting XML isn't one of them.

Please let me know what you think.

         Cheers,
         --MarkM