This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Re:I DO hate XML (Score:5, Informative)
by EastCoastSurfer (310758) Neutral-[neutral.gif] on Friday March 28,
@08:13AM (#5615995)
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think XML is a language.
LOL, so true. Maybe /. should link to a XML FAQ each time they do a
story.
XML document == data in a well defined format
XSL/XSLT == tells how to display XML data(think FOP), but is itself a
valid XML document
XPATH == XML query language, which after you look a few examples it
isn't too hard
SVG == vector graphic format stored in an XML data stream
XML itself is not hard, but until you figure out how all the many
pieces fit together it can be confusing. Another thing to keep in mind
is that you don't have to use every piece to make use of XML.
===
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Just make </> close whatever the last tag was. That instantly cuts the
size of the files in almost half, and makes them easier to read as
well.
And yes, it could be confusing in a heavily nested file, but nothing
says you have to use them. It would be a godsend for database columns.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
The people I know call that:
<a href="http://cantaforda.com/~vlb/Projects/OML/">Ostensible Markup Language (OML)</a>
<P>
The point is that if you're just doing something simple,
like say dumping a database table to a file with code you've
written, which you're going to read later with code that's
also under your control, maybe you don't need the full-blown
XML business. But "Ostensbile Markup Language" is close
enough to XML that you can still parse it with some XML
tools, like the perl package XML::Simple.
===