On Tuesday, April 19, 2016 at 11:17:23 PM UTC+5:30, Tim Chase wrote: > On 2016-04-19 09:46, Rustom Mody wrote: > > inkscape > > gimp > > blender > > libreoffice writer/calc/prese > > wireshark > > skype > > firefox > > audacity > > musescore > > totem > > vlc > > dia > > > > Do these look like text-based apps to you? > > Well, let's take a look at their native file formats: > > Inkscape: SVG > > Libreoffice: compressed XML > > Firefox: HTML+CSS+JS > > Musescore: compressed text > > Dia: compressed XML > > While I haven't used Musescore, I have used the others and > hand-edited the files in each case. Using vi/vim, or even ed(1). > Because I can, and sometimes because I have to in order to do some > convoluted process that would be a pain to do in a GUI.
If you think xml/html is ok as replacement for text then we have no significant disagreement. That is after all the main point of http://blog.languager.org/2012/10/html-is-why-mess-in-programming-syntax.html viz that program texts would be better off replacing text with hypertext. [that html = Hyper Text Markup Language adds to the snark; but does not change the message] The key difference between all the above and state of art in programming languages is that lexing, parsing is in principle and possibly in practice 'outsourced' to generic XML tools. With programming languages these are in silos in the innards of the language implementation. And so people typically studying compilers etc come to think of lexing and parsing as important/key activities.... except for a few outliers like Marvin Minsky: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/TuringLecture/TuringLecture.html -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
