From: pat hayes (phayes@ai.uwf.edu)
Date: 10/09/00
>I remember my initial peevish reaction to moving from FORTRAN to ALGOL(in >1972): why do I have to learn all this syntax to write a line of ALGOL, I >thought, when I can do the same thing in only six or ten simple FORTRAN >statements that I already know? By the end of the course, I understood. Bad example to make your case, Bob. Some people still use Fortran, but does *anyone* still use ALGOL? (Want to compare ADA with C++ ?) And just to ream the point home, the point of all that extra ALGOL syntax was to indicate program structure: but XML is a language for describing labelled trees, that's all. Its not hard to indicate tree structure. If God issued awards for the most brain-damaged, ugly and unnecessarily complicated notation for showing the structure of labelled trees, I wouldn't be able to beat XML. <FarewellSalutation> <SubClassOf resource= "http://www.MissManners.org/2000/10/Email-ont#Salutation" /> <label = "Farewell"/> <ActualSalutationText>Best wishes</ActualSalutationText> </FarewellSalutation> Pat Hayes --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
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