ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
1–10 of 14 posts
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#2The live demos aren't appearing for me in Firefox, which makes the page nearly useless in understanding what ArchieML actually looks like.
The relevant error appears to be:
TypeError: aml.innerText is undefined archieml.org:364:6
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#3Interesting that there's mention of JSON and YAML, but no mention of TOML. I'm more interested in hearing why TOML wasn't an adequate solution.
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#4The live demos aren't appearing for me in Firefox, which makes the page nearly useless in understanding what ArchieML actually looks like. The relevant error appears to be: TypeError: aml.innerText is undefined archieml.org:364:6 Firefox 36.0, Ubuntu 14.10
Thanks for pointing it out - should be fixed now. Sorry for the bug!
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#5Interesting that there's mention of JSON and YAML, but no mention of TOML. I'm more interested in hearing why TOML wasn't an adequate solution.
Maybe he/she hasn't heard of it. I've read about TOML just few weeks ago.
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#6Reminds me a little of INI files. They are a good demonstration of how sometimes simplicity is best.
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#7So, I guess ArchieML is to JSON what Markdown is to HTML?
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#8Interesting that there's mention of JSON and YAML, but no mention of TOML. I'm more interested in hearing why TOML wasn't an adequate solution.
Maybe he/she hasn't heard of it. I've read about TOML just few weeks ago.
I hadn't heard of TOML before today, and it looks like TOML goes a long way towards an easy to understand markup.
But even something as minimal as TOML still relies on several programming concepts for its syntax: the use of the equals sign for assignment, that strings need to be quoted, using "#" to begin comments. They're very basic concepts, but still concepts that need to be taught in programming 101.
The place where syntax errors in a live interactive graphic is dangerous is when it's public and a copy editor goes in to fix a typo. Even if they aren't familiar with every concept in AML (like square brackets to denote arrays), when they're fixing that typo, the only line they're editing is:
key: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Which is about as error-proof as we could get it.
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#9Akin to :skip, wouldn't a :preserve or :quote block to suspend syntax temporarily be useful?
That is, for tracts of text that need to be quoted verbatim, including colons or [brackets] or similar?
Given how the parser is designed it seems like this would be particularly easy to implement...
Re: ArchieML is a structured text format optimized for human writeability
#10Interesting that there's mention of JSON and YAML, but no mention of TOML. I'm more interested in hearing why TOML wasn't an adequate solution.
Far as I can tell this is a really different use case from most markup languages:
- Set up a Google doc.
- Point a bunch of non-technical users (like reporters) at the doc to fill in content.
- Continually parse what they're doing into JSON that can be formatted and pushed live as soon as it's in decent shape.
It looks kind of like YAML/TOML/etc., but it's coming from a different place. You're not trying to make a .INI file a little friendlier for a human programmer -- you're trying to make a collaborative Google doc a little friendlier for a parser. Any design process that didn't start with an unstructured doc, and add the minimum amount of structure necessary to get something useful out, is going to end up with the wrong tradeoffs.