Xython - XML-Formed Python

[Alan Kennedy]

Steve Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in message 
> I haven't looked at their site, but XML (using tags for structures,
> statements etc) may have considerable benefits over plain text as a
> source code representation - the only problem being the need for good
> XML editors...

This has been raked over quite a few times in the past on xml-dev.
Although it seems like a good idea at first, it rapidly degrades when
you start looking at details.

For example, how do you represent the following simple python function
in XML, in a way that is either

A: simpler to read (or write) than it already is?
B: simpler to process than it already is, using the python compiler,
or a parsing toolkit like SPARK?

#------------
import math

def sphereVol(r):
    return 4/3*math.pi*r*r*r
#------------

one-abstract-syntax-tree-to-rule-them-all-ly-yrs

Alan.