On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Markus Hofmann wrote:
Alex Rousskov wrote:
I will try to show that XML presents virtually no advantages
compared to a domain specific language and introduces significant
hurdles.
I assume "domain specific language" implies a "custom/new/specific"
language?
Yes (assuming there is not one available already). Please note that
proposed IRML is also a new domain specific language.
If so, allow me to raise flag in that we should use existing
approaches (e.g. XML or others) as long as they don't have serious
disadvantages, rather than inventing everything ourselves.
It looks like I may have introduced a terminology/classification
problem. Rules Language can use XML or, say, UTF-8 to represent its
tokens. Both XML and UTF-8 are "existing approaches".
The main problem with XML is that in addition to providing lexical
tokens for the Rules Language, XML demands certain hierarchical
relationship and order between language statements. IMO, that
relationship and order are note appropriate for a good Rules Language
because they do not exist in the original Rules Manipulation domain.
In other words, it is not a question of reusing an existing encoding.
It is a question of using the right existing encoding.
Alex.