Michael S. Klein wrote:

> > I'm new to the list so please forgive any reopening of old woundsbut has an
> > XML-based
> > source externalization been discussed?
>
> Not here, really.  My personal take, having only given XML a cursory look,
> is that XML has a rather large amount of overhead for Smalltalk source
> externalization.
>
> 1) The general overhead it has by trying to be 'human-readable' without
> really succeeding.

[snip]

> 2) XML seems to have a rather large amout of intellectual overhead to
> cater to the static-typing crowd.
>
> On the upside: XML is a standard, and there is a fair body of (non-Smalltalk)
> code for parsing/validation/...

I envision a higher upside.  I don't know much about XML so
my envisioned upside might be up in the clouds, but here's a scenario
I envision:

----------begin envisioned scenario----------

    Source code can be stored in XML documents.  Many of these
    Squeak source holding documents will be published on the internet.
    Internet search engines will understand XML.  I will be able to
    request a search engine to do things like:

            Search every XML document of type "SqueakSource"
            and retrieve every attribute of type "Method" that has
            a subattribute of type "Author" that has a subattribute
            of type "LastName" that is equal to "Smith"

    or

            Retrieve every XML document of type "SqueakSource"
            that has an attribute of type "SqueakVersion" that is
            greater than "2.1" and has an attribute of type "Subsystem"
            that matches pattern "Source code *"

----------end of envisioned scenario----------

I'm betting that there will soon be services that are
similar to internet search engines, that understand
XML, and can retreive things that match arbitrarily
complex (XML) structural patterns.  There will be
no-cost services (peppered with ads, of course)
low cost services without ads, and services
accessible via APIs (and these APIs will no doubt
involve XML).  There will be all kinds of data grinding
machinery out there that can be used free of charge
or for a small charge, and the language of all this
machinery will be XML.

Data conforming to XML can be grinded, data not
conforming to XML must be cut with your own fork.

Maybe I bit too hard on the XML hype, but it looks
to me to be getting or gotten critical mass and
is simple enough to work.

....Mike