I like the idea .. The xsd schema can add a lot of validation information eg a byte has a range between 0 and 255 ( or bit 0 to 1) , not standard default values eg int could default to -1 etc . And if you use the framework there are a lot of tools there for serializing into objects so your not even aware of the XML .
I dont find the monospaced font much more readable than xml we do a lot of XML and HTML parsing in our heads now so im probably used to it . Thats provided that the XML does not insert all the xml namespace stuff. In addition the audiance for reading this is not huge so if XML works i dont think its a huge imposition. XSDs on the other hand are a pain too read so that is a big issue , but the tools can create them from classes and attributes so your not really aware of them . A lot of DSL's were specified in XML , Microsoft had a go with the M Modelling language / Oslo as well before they abandoned most of it ( not because of the XML) . It was like XML / XSD but had a few changes ( which is anoying as 99% XML is not 100%) but there was a whole lot of ambitious extra stuff like a GUI to create/view/ edit it as well as persitance tools ( eg a DB schema for the language and versioning / version merge support etc) . This is also worth a look http://irony.codeplex.com/ and http://irony.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Expression%20Grammar%20sample&referringTitle=Home it uses C# expresions for the language ... Not really suitable for a full language ( but they do Java) , ties you to a language and bitc expressions defining bitc and how to bootstrap it makes my head hurt but its an interesting idea for Micro Languages/DSL. Ben
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