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On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 15:25, Evan Powers wrote: |
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> On Sunday 04 May 2003 12:49 pm, Björn Lindström wrote: |
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> > SGML (and thus HTML) was never originally intended to be human |
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> > readable/hackable. The same goes for XML. It is designed to be |
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> > easily _parsed_, not easily _read_. |
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> |
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> I think you've made an excellent point here, one people should not quickly |
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> overlook. Though I'll take a slightly different perspective. |
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> |
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> XML isn't intrinsically harder to read than any other general-purpose |
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> expressive system. When humans say that it is, what they're really doing is |
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> complaining that they cannot use domain-specific sub-syntaxes. (Or rather, |
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> that they are discouraged from doing so.) |
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> |
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> Example. Mathematical notation isn't /necessary/, people could just write "a |
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> quantity named y equals the indefinite integral of f, a function of a |
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> quantity named x, times the derivative of the quantity x". But they never do, |
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> instead preferring to write "y=", a certain squiggle, and "f(x)dx". |
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> |
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> Does anyone actually think a human is ever going to (voluntarily) write an |
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> equation of even moderate complexity in MathML? |
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> |
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> My point is this: |
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> |
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> Starting and stopping most services is a task that can be broken down into |
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> execing or fork-execing another program with a particular environment, |
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> particular command line arguments, and particular input and output |
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> redirections. Shell is a domain-specific language particularly suited to |
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> expressing these operations. |
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> |
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> I won't say that XML has no place, or that script snippets shouldn't be |
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> embedded within an XML document, or that the script a human writes shouldn't |
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> be immediately translated into its XML equivalent. I am saying, however, that |
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> humans will insist on writing in the shell domain-specific language where it |
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> is more convenient for them to do so, and that forcing them to do otherwise |
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> in the name of anything is a long-term design mistake. |
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> |
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> Which I suppose is a quite strong statement to make after all. |
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> |
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> Evan |
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> |
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> -- |
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> gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
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|
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Yes, you are absolutly right about people wanting to use a |
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domain-specific language when it is most convienent. It would be best to |
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incorporate bash scripts in any XML style system. XML is probably best |
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for metadata (like dependancies and such),. but the system should allow |
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people to use shell scripts when any tricky commands have to be issued |
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to start something up. |
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-- |
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Wesley Leggette <wleggette@××××.net> |
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|
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|
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |