Re: off-topic request for suggestions

[Randy Terbush <ra...@covalent.net>]

Rasmus,

I think that I would opt for option 2. I think the chance that 
people would use both an ASP parser and PHP parser on the same file 
is a stretch. Seems that use of MIME type could control which 
parser gets it anyhow. I think that getting behind the momentum of 
ASP would have some benefits with editors, etc. as you mentioned.


> The new XML standard uses <? ... ?> tags.  This conflicts with the
> tag-style I was going to use in the new version of mod_php.  I am trying
> to muddle through the various standards along with various HTML publishing
> systems in order to come up with a tag that is not likely to get clobbered
> in the future and will at least make some sort of sense to existing HTML
> publishing systems.
> 
> Some suggestions so far have been:
> 
> 1) <?php ... ?>
> 2) <% ... %>
> 3) << ... >> , <: ... :> , <@ ... @> , <- ... -> , <_ ... _> , <> ... <>
> 
> Option 1 is a bit cumbersome because of its length.  The way PHP is used,
> you frequently pop in and out of PHP mode and needing a 5 character start
> tag could get tedious.  It is however semi-SGML compliant as it looks like
> an SGML PI (process instruction) tag.
> 
> Option 2 is what Microsoft uses for ASP.  The logic for using this tag
> would be that nobody is likely to use it for anything else, and existing
> HTML editors probably understand that a block of code is supposed to go
> between the tags and will therefore do something intelligent.  The problem
> with this is that Microsoft uses it for ASP.  Could get very confusing and
> it might even conflict one day when someone tries to use both ASP and PHP
> on the same file.
> 
> Option 3 is to go for a completely weird tag.  Looks cool, is nice and
> short, easy to type and isn't likely to conflict with anybody.
> Disadvantages would be that we are completely ignoring any and all
> standard ever written and HTML editing systems are not going to be very
> happy with them.
> 
> My problem is that I can make a pretty strong case both for and against
> all three options.  
> 
> -Rasmus