[9fans] vga hell

[9fans] vga hell

[boyd, rounin]

check this:


http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/movitz/losp/x86-pc/vga.lisp?rev=1.5&cvsroot=movitz&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
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MGRS 31U DQ 52572 12604

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[geoff]

Wow, vga hell *and* lisp hell, together.  Throw in some perl hell and
xml hell (/lib/vgadb converted to xml via perl, say) and you'd have a
full house.

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[boyd, rounin]

hell, we try to please ...

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[Charles Forsyth]

>>/lib/vgadb converted to xml via perl, say

it would need to be a perl implementation of xslt to meet w3c stundards (a `stundard'
is a self-declared standard that makes you feel stunned esp. if it hits you), but i digress:

i think it's wrong to include lisp in that `hellish' set, with vga, perl and xml,
at least in the sense of the underlying lisp `core'.
i admit the Common Lisp book has the disadvantage that at 50 pounds the price is also the weight,
but that's the usual standards hell, not restricted to lisp.  if the spiders had used s-expressions
for structured data, and lisp for portable transformation, any resulting
standards mess might have been easier to circumnavigate, or perhaps avoid.
w3c also wouldn't have ended up in an xml-binary tangle (because there's a standard transport
encoding for s-expressions that encompasses binary as ... binary; such magic!)

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[geoff]

I suppose it's just my personal distaste for lisp.

The XML mess seems like so many of the other `standard' web
technologies that emerged from the bubble: apparently rushed out the
door without looking to see if something similar had been done before
(and could sensibly be re-used) and without much thought, since there
was no time for such frivolity when people were living on Internet
Time™.

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> if the spiders had used s-expressions
> for structured data, and lisp for portable transformation, any resulting
> standards mess might have been easier to circumnavigate, or perhaps avoid.
> w3c also wouldn't have ended up in an xml-binary tangle

presotto mentioned he was doing something about it; did anything
come of it?

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=fedc67e8eceb5f0e62cd3cc7d53c8b69%40plan9.bell-labs.com

Re: [9fans] vga hell

[dvd]

>>>/lib/vgadb converted to xml via perl, say
>
> it would need to be a perl implementation of xslt to meet w3c stundards (a `stundard'
> is a self-declared standard that makes you feel stunned esp. if it hits you), but i digress:


1. There is a perl implementation of XSLT.
2. Where did you met word 'standard' in connection with w3c?
3. What's wrong with XSLT?

>
> i think it's wrong to include lisp in that `hellish' set, with vga, perl and xml,
> at least in the sense of the underlying lisp `core'.
> i admit the Common Lisp book has the disadvantage that at 50 pounds the price is also the weight,

Why have you chosen Common Lisp to compare? Common Lisp is not the most
common lisp in the world. And there are small and compact lisps, too.

> but that's the usual standards hell, not restricted to lisp.  if the spiders had used s-expressions
> for structured data, and lisp for portable transformation, any resulting
> standards mess might have been easier to circumnavigate, or perhaps avoid.

lisp *was* used for processing of structural data on the web. The name is DSSSL.
Then it has turned out that the tree paradigm of XML is more convenient than
the traditional list processing paradigm of the many lisps. Hence XSLT, by the
way.

> w3c also wouldn't have ended up in an xml-binary tangle (because there's a standard transport
> encoding for s-expressions that encompasses binary as ... binary; such magic!)

Many projects become cluttered after twelve years of development. Others just
become abandoned. It is very difficult to remain both compact and popular
for such a long time; do you know any examples?

David