Re: Lisp (fwd)

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

James McCann wrote:
> 
> [...]
> XML does have advantages in many areas but I am unconvinced that the pain of
> switching would buy much.  If you take away the facts that probably more people
> have been exposed to XML than to a lisp-like language, and that there exist
> already parsers for XML, that is just look at the merits of XML processing
> vs. GDL processing, I don't think there is a compelling argument to change.
> The barrier of not knowing GDL is actually less I think than the barrier of
> not knowing XML.

Hmm, good thoughts.  One secret goal of mine is to shift to doing online
design of all the game rules, since it gets really hard to keep track
of everything in games with many types.  If this works out, then the
data format doesn't need so many concessions to human readability, and
can be changed to something with more automated processing tools.  But
if your experience with XML hasn't made you an enthusiast, that's not a
good sign...

> BTW, if the decision to switch is made, I have written yacc and lex files
> which parse the subset of XML that I think would be useful for the project,
> although I have not (yet) implemented DTD validation.  This results in a
> parser which is many times faster than libxml (although less capable).
> It may also be more portable than libxml (I am not sure that libxml compiles
> for the mac, but  I don't know if lex and yacc exist for the mac either).

All this is doable for Macs, both OS 9 and OS X, so not a big issue.

Stan