Re: XML tools for Octave

[Bill Denney]

Sorry, I sent the last message early accidentally, see the bottom of this 
one for the end of the message.

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Bill Denney wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, John W. Eaton wrote:
>
> > I really don't know much about XML, but maybe XML is just the wrong 
> > solution (generally, not just for Octave)?  But I guess it is probably too 
> > late for that discussion as so many jumped for XML because it had the right 
> > buzz to it and now there are many XML things that we would like to be able 
> > to handle with Octave.
>
> XML is often the wrong solution that people use for the buzzword, but there 
> are definitely times that it's right.
>
> > Or, if XML is the right solution, then can you (briefly, one or two 
> > sentences) explain why it is the right solution, and also why it seems to 
> > be so difficult to use correctly?
>
> XML is the right solution to heirarchical data storage.  It's difficult 
> because doing it right requires a lot more effort than most people put into 
> it and so there are many badly made XML files and parsers.
>
> Most people would consider these to be equivalent , but they're not


<a>b<c>d</d></a>
<a> b <c> d </d> </a>

Though for some XML file types they can be equivalent (the whitespace is 
not significant in MathML for instance while it is somewhat significant in 
HTML (multiple whitespaces are compressed to one whitespace).  So, in some 
cases the above would be considered equivalent, but they are not at the 
XML parsing stage (they could be equivalent at a higher level, only).

Andy had done a good job pointing out the deficiencies of most parsers so 
far, and I won't reiterate them.

Bill

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