BTW. the HTML is not valid XML so your example is a bit misleading. The P-elements contain the paragraphs rather than delimit them. The XML would be more verbose since it needs end-tags for P:
<p>Note that you would also need to gzip your
s-expressions if you are concerned about size.</p>
The s-expr OTOH would be more confusing, because there isn't a clear distinction between element-name and content:
(p Note that you would also need to gzip your
s-expressions if you are concerned about size.)
You might want to choose a different syntax to make the distinction clearer:
(p "Note that you would also need to gzip your
s-expressions if you are concerned about size.")
or:
((p) Note that you would also need to gzip your
s-expressions if you are concerned about size.)
In the end, you have to make some of the same trade-off decisions that the designers of SGML and XML did. Just saying that s-expressions are simpler than XML is like saying ASCII is simpler than s-expressions: True, but kind of missing the point.
