Subject: Re: Alternative *ML syntaxes [was: Re: StudlyCaps ] From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 18 Nov 2002 18:08:50 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3246631730734601@naggum.no> * Rob Warnock | Perhaps in the case of HTML there are no conflicts of this type (I | haven't checked thoroughly), but if one tried to generate output into | somebody's arbitrary XML form, say, where they hadn't defined the DTD | with that conflict in mind... I would strongly urge you to please find an actual conflict before even considering the problem. Where there is a conflict, solve it locally. This does not need a global solution or even any problemizing because it happens extremely rarely and when it does, you can deal with it in the mapping. This is, after all, an editing tool. A little human effort to take care of problem that never happens is better than a lot of human effort to ensure a problem that never happens /could/ never happen. | (Or does HTML and/or XML already require that the tag & attribute names | be disjoint?) Attribute names are local to an element (please note the terminology), but element names are global. | That's why I somewhat prefer \foo{...} to {foo ...}, since I tend to | use curlies in writing plain text (e.g., sample C code), and almost | never use "\". (MS users MMV.) The whole point here is to make the syntax more navigable with Emacs, not less so than *ML. | TeX has shown that \entity and \func{...} can coexist, has it not? Yes, by attaching magic meaning to whitespace. I want unescaped { and } to be markup, unconditionally. I believe we have different goals with the syntax. Besides, I want to clean up the fantastically ugly mess that is TeX, too, not mimic it. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.