Re: Use of SGML for documentation (Re: potato -> woody upgrade not smooth...)
Moin Matthew Danish,
> I cooked up a quick example for you... see the 3 attached files.
nice idea. And it shows that LISP syntax is as fine to represent hirachical
data as are XML and SGML syntax.
LISP, in this case, is only syntax and free of semantics. This is similar
to XML & SGML and a difference to LaTeX, roff or HTML. Semantics is a
different can of worms. Its provided by document type definitions like
QWERTZ, LinuxDoc, DocBook, DebianDoc or XML-Edifact.
The third leg is processing. Your example showed that you have a kind
of processing to map LISP to DebianDoc. And here markup languages show
abstraction. You can process SGML or XML into many other formats using
nearly any language you want. And at this point XML and SAX or SGML and
Amsterdam SGML Parser are superior to your LISP example. Your LISP code
has to parsed into memory, and shares the same drawback as XML/DOM or
most XSLT processors, if you think about EDI documents in megabyte size.
My point here is that SGML and XML are only syntax and abstract to
semantics or processing. This is a feature, imho, as it allows to
chose best fit semantics and best fit processing for your type of
documents.
Other document formats like HTML, LaTeX, roff are bound to their
sememantics and to a single tool to process them. So SGML or XML
are good for any kind of hirachical data and can be processed into
many formats using many differenct programming languages and design
patterns.
Bye Michael
--
mailto:kraehe@copyleft.de UNA:+.? 'CED+2+:::Linux:2.2.18'UNZ+1'
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