Per Bothner scripsit:

> Using SRFI-10 has the known problems - and looks ugly IMP.

*All* unfamiliar lexical syntax looks ugly: this is a psycholinguistic fact.

1) Why didn't the Lisp community recognize XML as a notational variant
of a subset of S-expressions that many other people found accessible?
Because they looked at the lexical syntax, "shuddered, hit the thing on
the head, and dropped it in the trash."

2) Why has Dylan never gotten full emotional acceptance as a Lisp variant?
I believe that its doom was sealed when it changed its lexical syntax.

3) Why were British mathematicians so loyal throughout the 18C to
Newton's cumbersome methods in calculus?  Not just because he was English.
our own Charles Babbage was one of the first in Britain to advocate in
1803 the "principles of pure d-ism [dy/dx notation, pun on "deism"] in
opposition to the dot-age [dotted variable notation, pun on "dotage"]
of the [British] university."  He was speaking mostly about Leibniz's
methods, but used the differences in lexical syntax as an easily grasped
symbol of the difference.

4) Why are anglophones so unduly disturbed by spelling errors, or
(if non-American) by minor American spelling reforms like "color" for
"colour"?  (Note the low-level grumbling about having to use "color"
in HTML.)

I could go on, but in short, notational novelty is ugly, unless we
ourselves (whatever "we" may be) have invented it.

--
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        xxxxxx@ccil.org
A poetical purist named Cowan                   [that's me]
Once put the rest of us dowan.                  [on xml-dev]
"Your verse would be sweeter / If it only had metre
And rhymes that didn't force me to frowan."     [overpacked line!] --Michael Kay