[linux-audio-dev] LADSPA proposal ...

[Steve Harris]

On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 10:36:27 +0200, Alfons Adriaensen wrote:
> Seriously now, having to choose between LISP or XML, I'd be 100%
> on the LISP side. For those who really want XML, it should be 
> possible to come up with a LISP function that will just generate
> it from the LISP description - the inverse seems to be a bit
> more difficult.

I have to assume you're joking here ;)

Even if you just mean s-expressions, theres a reason why they flopped as a
data format - their really hard to prettyprint and really hard to read if
their not prettprinted. XML has been described as s-expressions with names
attributes - and thats exactly what it is (give or take), but naming the
attributes is important for human readability.

In any case, the syntax is only a part of any metadata language, the
semantics and guaranteeing extensibility are the hard part.

Guaranteeing extensibility with a naive XML Schema is hard, guaranteeing
it with an agreed s-expression syntax is almost impossible.

- Steve