Subject: Re: Dynamics of HTML From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/05/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3167117039809820@naggum.no> * Fernando <spamers@must.die> | I really think that sgml is way too complex for the rather | simple goals it achieves. After spending about 6 years with SGML, and in the process becoming an international authority, I came to conclude that the complexity of SGML qua language outweighs its benefits even when applied very carefully and intelligently, and that never happened because people didn't really understand what the simple goals were. I considered this fairly tragic at the time I decided to quit SGML altogether. (And "improvements" like XML actually make things a lot worse.) As for SGML and Lisp: I wrote a complete SGML parser in Emacs Lisp in 1990 and had a lot of fun with it, but it was very hard for other people to use for some reason. When I was encouraged to speak about it, one of the forefigures in the SGML world commented "that's great -- for you and the other two guys who know Lisp" and ridiculing Lisp solutions became de rigeur in the SGML community, even though people struggled with problems that various Lisp solutions had solved. #:Erik