Yeah, and it’s not really an obscure one either – having influenced many languages we use today. Language looks interesting, but definitely would be worth a rename to avoid confusion.
Unfortunate lack of good terms for distinguishing in this space. It doesn’t help that “document” is abused for both purposes and I don’t think we have a great noun for ~unstructured-text that communicates quite the right point.
Looks useful, it’s a nice compromise between XML and something more like TOML. It seems very similar to Tree Notation; it could even be an alternate, indentation-insensitive way to write Tree Notation.
I agree that SML is a bad name. Standard ML is a well-known language, and confusion is inevitable. You could keep “Simple Markup Language”, and use a different acronym, maybe “SiML”?
I was going to make the same comment on Tree notation, although I find the unfortunately named SML clearer to understand based on its documentation and easier to read. I’d let go of the End, though.
Particularly, I like it is easier to set nested scopes than the record-jar format, but that is simply by the fact the record-jar’s parser is simply a deterministic finite-state machine, while the SML’s is a pushdown automaton.
Still, a valuable contribution, which I will be triggered to use when in need of a context-free configuration language.
That’s just very unfortunate naming. There already is an SML, Standard ML, and it has existed since the 90s.
Also, the website is nigh unusable on my phone.
Yeah, and it’s not really an obscure one either – having influenced many languages we use today. Language looks interesting, but definitely would be worth a rename to avoid confusion.
SML is the standard ML! And SML doesn’t waste space on my Timex Sinclair.
Skimming the examples, I was surprised its not a markup like HTML or Markdown, but rather for structured data more like XML.
Unfortunate lack of good terms for distinguishing in this space. It doesn’t help that “document” is abused for both purposes and I don’t think we have a great noun for ~unstructured-text that communicates quite the right point.
Looks useful, it’s a nice compromise between XML and something more like TOML. It seems very similar to Tree Notation; it could even be an alternate, indentation-insensitive way to write Tree Notation.
I agree that SML is a bad name. Standard ML is a well-known language, and confusion is inevitable. You could keep “Simple Markup Language”, and use a different acronym, maybe “SiML”?
I was going to make the same comment on Tree notation, although I find the unfortunately named SML clearer to understand based on its documentation and easier to read. I’d let go of the End, though.
Have you seen KDL? Looks similar.
Oh, didn’t knew about KDL, and yes, it looks very similar. Thanks for sharing!
This format seems to bring many of the good design items highlighted in the chapter “Data File Metaformats” of “The Art of UNIX Programming”.
Particularly, I like it is easier to set nested scopes than the record-jar format, but that is simply by the fact the record-jar’s parser is simply a deterministic finite-state machine, while the SML’s is a pushdown automaton.
Still, a valuable contribution, which I will be triggered to use when in need of a context-free configuration language.
Read it as SAML first, and was going to say that it’s not simple