Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: T. Nelson -- Doesn't understand XML?

Author:Dennis Peterson
Posted:11/10/1999; 8:36:34 AM
Topic:T. Nelson Critique of Embedded Markup
Msg #:12921 (In response to 12919)
Prev/Next:12920 / 12922

It's a good point that changing the markup could be done sensibly. However I think it is likely to introduce more problems than it solves. If I have a text stream like "294839543", there are an infinite number of possible meanings for it. You could replace my tag with another giving it a completely different meaning. Sure, it's just a different interpretation of my number, but it might be a completely erroneous interpretation. It could even be the case that my string stands for three different values, which are separated by XML tags, and that your tags will group them into two numbers instead. If we want to use XML to transmit reliably meaningful data, this doesn't seem like a good idea.

A better way to modify tags, IMHO, is to use XSL tranformations. You can leave the original XML in place if you want, and filter it through your own XSL document to apply your personal interpretation, with less risk of screwing things up by accident, and with the end user better able to separate the interpretation from the original meaning.

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:53:27 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.