XML-Data: advantages over DTD syntax? (and some wishes)

[len bullard]

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Bruce T. Smith wrote:
> > I think Len's reaction is a bit extreme. I may debug in ASCII with line
> > numbers, but I don't edit with ed or EDLIN. If I wanted to hack lots of
> > HTML or SGML or VRML with a text editor, I'd choose emacs or some other
> > editor that was aware of syntactic structures.
> 
> Sure, but Emacs does not hide verbosity. The complaint with XML-DATA is
> primarily verbosity. All of the XML syntax buries the information. The
> more dense the information you are working with, the smaller you want
> your delimiters. XML tags are <LOOOOONG>, <VERBOSE> delimiters.

Right.  This is precisely the comment made about SGML DTDs for 
structured procedural scripting languages.  They are "ugly" to 
look at if one has been a C programmer, and really nasty to 
type. Witness MID:  worked like a charm.  Really hard on the 
typist until reusable framgments emerged.  MIL-D-87289 is another
example.  
In fact, many of the modular DTDs that used element name 
hierarchies to simulate object-qualities had this problem.

Colonized namespaces probably will as well.

len

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