Using Lisp as a Markup Language The LAML Approach

Lisp is widely known as an extremely versatile language. In this paper we will demonstrate that Lisp can be used as a powerful markup language for WWW authoring and for provision of information on the Internet. Using the LAML approach, as introduced in this paper, we write textual documents directly in Lisp; Function calls serve as applications of tags, as known from the SGML family of markup languages. The easy and uniform access to abstraction is the main advantage of using a programming language as a markup language. In addition, the direct availability of a powerful programming language allows the author to automate many trivial tasks in the writing process. We describe a systematic mirroring of HTML in Scheme, and we refer to a number of different document styles based on this mirroring.