No, I keep the nested list representation of data (as does I-Expressions: https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html), you just ditch the enclosing parens in favor of whitespace (or, to be more precise, in favor of 3 syntactic tokens: atomBreakSymbol, nodeBreakSymbol and edgeSymbol; by convention space/" ", newline/"\n", and space/" ").
>> You no longer even have syntax errors.
>How so?
See for yourself: https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/. Try to generate a syntax error, it's impossible. For the same reason you don't have syntax errors at the binary notation. I think this is a very, very important hint that there is something important going on here that ties into something in nature (I don't know what that is but seems like there is a fancy prize to the person who can explain that in mathy terms). However, using the openParenSymbol and closeParenSymbol style of delimiters, you do have syntax errors--unbalanced parens.
>> Program concatenation is easier.
> How so?
This one is mildly easier, but comes up all the time. We have a Tree Language called Grammar for building other Tree Languages (and yes, Grammar itself has an implementation in Grammar). We have a Tree Language called Hakon that compiles to CSS. And we have one called Stump that compiles to HTML. Want to build a new language called "TreeML" that has both? Just `cat hakon.grammar > treeml.grammar; cat stump.grammar >> treeml.grammar` and you are just about done (just concat your new root node). You don't have to worry about adjusting any parens at the tails. A minor improvement, but lots of little things like that add up.
> but then the has a different look and feel. It becomes something different
This might be true. It seems you are taking the stand that Tree Notation is something different than Lisp (which I actually lean to agreeing with), while most lispers have given me the flippant response "congratulations! you've reinvented lisp/s-expressions". I think both arguments have merit. We will see where it goes and perhaps although the differences with parens S-Expressions are slight, perhaps there will always be a separate niche for parens lisp.
