DTD for maxima internal form



--- Stavros Macrakis <stavros.macrakis@verizon.net> wrote:
> horrible macro languages (Tex -- well, I threw that in to provoke 
> the physicists -- in reality of course it has minuscule presence in 
> the real world)

True of course, but still... pbbbt :-P.  For all it's faults all I have
to do to love TeX again is think of Microsoft Word.

> There are of course intelligent ways to use XML (as an interchange
> format where efficiency isn't paramount, as an archival format, etc.)

This is where I think it wouldn't hurt to use XML in Maxima.   Sam
Steingold has an xml parser as part of clocc, under GPL, and james
anderson's cl-xml work http://www.cl-xml.org/ is apparently lgpl
licensed, so we wouldn't be starting from scratch.  

> and foolish ways to use it (as an internal format, as a data
> definition language, etc.).  Just like s-expressions.  It would be 
> foolish to use the ASCII form of s-expressions as an internal 
> format, after all....

Agreed - XML and MathML both should serve as output and (sometimes)
input formats, not as serious internal components.

CY

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