Abstract Programming World Wide Web Pages in Scheme

In this paper we will argue that pages on the World Wide Web can be made directly as programs in a functional programming language instead of through HTML or an HTML-based authoring tool. We use the Scheme programming language from the Lisp family for WWW page production. It is concluded that a Lisp language is an attractive direct vehicle for authoring of Internet material in the sense that the source of a WWW document becomes a Lisp program. Abstraction from details in the underlying markup language constitutes the main advantage in our approach. This is consistent with the expected advantage of introducing XML as a successor of HTML. In addition we find it useful to have the power of a high quality programming language available for automation of routine tasks during the authoring process.