
S-Expression based markup language - SlyShy
http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/2010/05/25/towards-a-better-bbcode/
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thwarted
_Supported tags are b, i, u, s, o, sub, sup, code, spoiler, quote, blockquote,
and m._

Let's get some semantic tags in there; I thought we all agreed that the
display elements (bold, underline, italics) are out and semantic elements
(strong, emphasis) are in.

~~~
norswap
The semantic web somehow took a hit when w3c decided to work on html5 at the
expense of xhtml2. By the way, the semantic web is a lie (really, I don't
think there's a good way to separate content and presentation, as the
presentation is somehow part of the content).

What people on a forum are trying to do, is not to make their text look
"strong", whatever that means to the person who made the forum stylesheet, but
to make their text bold, whatever that means to them.

~~~
derefr
> What people on a forum are trying to do, is not to make their text look
> "strong", whatever that means to the person who made the forum stylesheet,
> but to make their text bold, whatever that means to them.

Well, no, not really; that's like saying that I'm trying to create a grilled-
cheese sandwich when I go shopping. Unless I am a professional chef (and thus
looking to experiment with the form rather than the content), what I really
want is the _experience of eating_ a grilled-cheese sandwich: the taste,
texture, aroma, visual of grill-marks on bread, etc.

What people on a forum want is the experience of seeing a bolded or italic
word: that they mentally emphasize, or add importance to, the term so marked-
up. The bolding is just a mechanism by which to achieve that experience, a
communication tool similar to speed lines in a comic book. If a particular
comic book does something other than speed lines to indicate movement—or if a
particular website does something else to indicate emphasis—then that is what
will be sought out, as that is the word used in the "vocabulary" of the site's
design to describe emphasis.

Strength or emphasis are the real goals; people just aren't used to stating
their real goals, rather than "what they're trying to do." (The bane of IRC
help channels everywhere.)

~~~
norswap
Bold or italic are two way to emphasize a word. (The destinction between
"strong" and "emphasis" seems quite arbitrary to me.) Yet, go around and
change the bold words in some person's text by italic words, and he will
probably not be happy, yet the emphasis is still there.

Edit : hoho, got the same point as Daniel Newby above whitout even looking. If
that's not some kind of proof..

~~~
derefr
However, if you male the strong text red, and the emphasized text green,
instead of typographically styling them at all, your audience will begin to
understand fairly shortly if your work is text-heavy. In publishing, you
_underline_ words in your manuscript that you want to come _out_ emphasized:
nowadays, they do it with italics, but before, they did indeed just underline
your text in the published copy.

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mahmud
Or you can use the real thing:

<http://weitz.de/cl-who/>

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b-man
You could also use SXML[1].

[1] <http://okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/SXML.html>

~~~
scott_s
As the author points out, S-expressions using parenthesis as delimiters are
probably not appropriate for text.

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abecedarius
Looks similar to Latte minus the backslashes. (Which is good; I wrote my old
website in Latte minus the backslashes, using a little preprocessor to adjust
the syntax.)

<http://www.latte.org/>

Also <http://curl.com/>

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moultano
Neat, but how do you insert links with it?

~~~
arethuza
{url <http://example.com/> Click here!}

From the manual/spec at:

<http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/misc/sexpcode.html>

An interesting idea, but I'm not convinced that it has that many advantages.

