OpenEuphoria

RE: Alternative for XML

• Posted by Tommy Carlier <tommy.carlier at pandora.be> Oct 17, 2003
• 484 views

Derek Parnell wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tommy Carlier" <tommy.carlier at pandora.be>
> To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
> Subject: Alternative for XML
> > I've created a markup language as an alternative for XML. I call it SMEL 
> > 
> > (Some Modest Extensible Language). It behaves a bit like XML, but it's 
> > more 
> > compact, and has some advanced features that XML doesn't have. To my 
> > opinion, it's also more human-readable, especially for programmers.
> > 
> > I'm also making a Euphoria-library for reading and writing 
> > SMEL-documents.
> > Is this a good idea? Would Euphoria-programmers use SMEL, or would they 
> > prefer using XML?
> > Example: the XML-fragment:
> > 
> > <?xml version="1.0"?>
> > <data>
> > <element attribute="value" attribute2="value2">Some data</element>
> > <empty/>
> > </data>
> > 
> > translated into SMEL:
> > 
> > <smel version="1.0">
> > data
> > {
> > element(attribute="value",attribute2="value2"){"Some data"}
> > empty;
> > }
> Interesting. I've been playing with something very similar for use with 
> win32lib. Your syntax is more inclusive than I need but it might be 
> worth me standardizing on SMEL. 
> Also, you might also like to consider non-text attribute values, and 
> removing the '=' symbol. For example ...
> <smel version{1.0}>
> data
> {
> element(attribute{value},attribute2{value2}){"Some data"}
> empty;
> }
> For win32lib, I could do something like ...
> <smel version{1.0}>
> form{
>   control{type{Window}, 
>           caption{Hello, World!}, 
>           left{12}, 
>           top{10},
>           width{300}, 
>           height{300}, 
>           flags{WS_VISIBLE, WS_DLGFRAME}
>          },
>   control{type{EditText},
>           name{UserId},
>           left{5}, top{5}
>           width(units{char}){20}
>          }
>   control{type{Button},
>           caption{Close},
>           flags{autoclose},
>           left(from{UserId}){2},
>           bottom{5}
>          }
>   }
> ...hmmmm... I'll think about it some more.
> -- 
> Derek

Thanks for showing the interest in SMEL. In standard SMEL, as it exists 
now, the above Win32Lib-definitions would look like this:

 <smel version='1.0'>
 form
 {
   control(type='Window', 
           caption='Hello, World!',
           left='12', 
           top='10',
           width='300', 
           height='300',
           flags='WS_VISIBLE,WS_DLGFRAME')
   { 
     /* the child-controls can be defined in the body of the 
parent-control */
     control(type='EditText',
             name='UserId',
             left='5', top='5'
             width='20ch'); /* 20ch = 20 chars: unit as part of the 
value */
     control(type='Button',
             caption='Close',
             flags='autoclose',
             left='UserId+2',
             bottom='5');
   }
 }

This is just an example. You can build much more powerful constructions 
than that with SMEL. I'll try and post a version of the SMEL-library as 
soon as possible.
I'm also working on SMEL-applications: specifications of SMEL-document 
formats like SMELS (SMEL Schema) for defining new SMEL-formats, and 
SMELT (SMEL Transformations) for transforming SMEL-formats to other 
SMEL-formats or to other text-formats (like XML or HTML).

More suggestions are welcome.