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From: Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing)
Date: 28 Dec 2002 13:41:57 +0000
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* thelifter  wrote:
> k...@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) wrote in message news:<cf333042.0212201140.66c2df58@posting.google.com>...
 
>> In XML, if I have <foo>1234</foo>, what is 1234? Is it a character
>> string of four digits? Or is it an integer? Where are the semantics?

> Often it is clear from the context what type it is. Often it doesn't
> matter, you can just treat everything as a string. And if you want to
> introduce type, nothing stops you. Example:

> <foo type="integer">1234</foo>

So now I have to write my own little string->integer routine, and my
own little string->float routine, and my own little string->x routine
for every type x that I want to support that isn't a string.  You have
no idea the joy I feel at having to write all these little parsers,
especially the float one, which I have about 1% chance of getting
right.

What was the problem XML was meant to solve, again?  Something to do
with not having every application have its own little parser for data
interchange, wasn't it?  But they didn't bother to provide syntax for
numbers, a type of data that programs do quote often need to
interchange, oh no, because that would have actually involved solving
the problem rather than providing employment for a few thousand CS
graduates writing yet another buggy, incomplete float parser.  Well, I
hate to tell you, but the high-tech bubble has pretty much burst and
it might be about time that people designing data interchange formats
actually designed them, rather than solving some trivial subset
problem, badly: paying for non-working systems is no longer
fashionable.

--tim