TAO: applications and vision

Note: This is subject to future work.

TAO can be used in all contexts where annotated tree structures are the common denominator. In particular it can serve as or be used to build:

• data serialization and interchange formats (like JSON or YAML),
• markup languages (like HTML or XML),
• application configuration languages (like HOCON or TOML),
• programming languages (like JavaScript or Scheme),
• any other Domain Specific Language (DSL).

TAO grows out of a broader vision to find a Universal Tree Annotation Syntax (UTAS). It is an attempt to bring a common language to all domains with the hope that unification and simplification at a very basic level will reduce complexity, duplication, and coupling, and will propagate and add up to tremendous improvements across different aspects of both the digital and the real world.