Re: Nature of XML (ramblings)

[Marius Amado Alves <amado.alves@netcabo.pt>]

Robert I. Eachus wrote:

 > Georg Bauhaus wrote:
 >
 >> Marius Amado Alves <maa@liacc.up.pt> wrote:
 >> : Programming languages have semantics. XML does not. Simple, no?
 >>
 >> If an IDREF attribute implies that an attribute value must
 >> refer to an element with the corresponding id, is that syntax?
 >
Ok, I stand corrected. I should have said *operational* semantics.

 > Guys, try not to get carried away!  In the post that started this
 > unending thread I said: "I don't know if you consider SQL, XML, and
 > HTML as a programming languages, but recently I have written a lot of
 > all three."
 >
 > Should I have said I don't know ... and I don't care. ;-)  I consider
 > writing SQL and HTML as part of a database interface program as
 > programming.  The fact that the SQL and HTML may be in quotes inside
 > an Ada subprogram is not really relevant. (They count as non-comment
 > source lines of code.) On the other hand, if I am creating a static
 > web page in HTML I don't consider that activity to be programming.  If
 > you have a different definition you use, fine.
 >
Sure. Just rambling now: it's interesting that usualy the somehow most
deep, higher concepts in a domain are the least well defined:
programming, programming languages. In linguistics "semantics" has been
called "the science that does not exist" (Fernando Belo?). And of course
some if not all linguistics semanticists agree but notice that you can
still 'do' semantics even though the term is not defined.

In programming we may be a bit more 'safe'. Ada, SQL, XML, HTML are all
well defined. As is the notion of general purpose language. Of course
Ada is such a thing whereas SQL, XML and HTML are not. SQL has Module
for extending C and Ada with it self. Of course when we use SQL, etc.
strings in an Ada program we're using these languages, but that does not
make them programming languages. We also often use English strings in an
Ada program e.g. for dialog boxes. That is a kind of multilingual
programming, but I would say 'proper' multilingual programming is when
you combine multiple *general purpose*, or 'operational' languages.
Systems often combine Ada and C. I remember writing a system with Ada,
C, Prolog, SQL, CGI (HTTP) and HTML. And of course there are the ORBs.

As I said, just rambling, but sometimes I feel the need to discuss these
higher concepts, to check if something has changed there with the
continuing appearance of new 'technologies'. I guess no changes since
last time I looked. Also, any XML appraisal touches a sensitive button
in me. I used to be attracted to XML. Now I find it horrible. Just today
I got this feeling independently. I was reading a PhD thesis by
Parmentier, where he transforms from BibTeX format to XML for "ease of
processing". He shows an entry in the the two formats side by side. The
contrast in readability is stunning: BiTeX very readable, XML completely
unreadable. And (La)TeX is not usually particularly readable. Also, you
could see right away that an automaton for parsing the BibTeX would be
much simpler to right than for the XML, and I bet more simpler to do it
e.g. in Ada that to write the XSLT for the XML (and assembling and all
the required tools). XML is the major hoax of two millenia.