[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > One thing I'm interested in - has anyone thought of using XML as a > neutral definition language in front of LilyPond? Potentially more > verbose, but there are potential benefits as well. (Probably will start > this as a separate thread if I get any takers on this question.) >
I didn't have time to write a reply myself, but this slashdot comment excellently summarizes why I think that XML for lilypond is a complete waste of time: XML-based. (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15, @08:55PM (#3527007) XML is just a method of storing structured data as a rooted tree. Nothing more. Nothing less. It's become popular not becuase the technology itself is particularly revolutionary-- the technology is simple. It's become popular, rather, becuase of a number of very versatile, useful, well-done parser libraries that (for example) let you save and retrieve your structured data to and from XML without much fuss or work at all. As opposed to mucking about with file pointers and binary data and such yourself, and probably misusing a free() call somewhere and segfaulting. (There is also the associated neat ease-of-parsing technologies, like schema and XSL, but i won't get into that.) One such parser library was written by microsoft, and is part of ".NET". This is why microsoft is pushing XML right now; it's a development best practice. Or something of the sort. Not because they are moving toward XML as an "open standard". (The fact it has a sexy acronym, and the fact that nebulous connections exist in people's minds between anything XML (no matter how useless) and the very useful technologies like SOAP and XSL that have sprung from XML, doesn't hurt.) XML does not support interoperability in any way unless everyone agrees on common XML grammars for a specific task. Unless Microsoft releases the XML schema for their new-office XML format, then the new MSWord format will be every bit as much unusable gibberish as the old MSWord format (except the new gibberish will contain a lot of > and < symbols, and begin with a standard tag identifying it as an XML document). Microsoft seems every bit as xenophobic as they'd ever been, and have given no indication they will release such a schema for any reason unless they are forced to as part of a court judgement terminating the current antitrust case with the states. And probably not even then, unless the court order is carried out by armed national guard members storming the Redmond compound. Han-Wen Nienhuys | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen/ _______________________________________________ Lilypond-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
