[REBOL] Re: Rebol & XML
From: AJMartin:orcon at: 6-Aug-2003 22:20
Hi, Brett!
You wrote:
> It has been a while since I looked at it, but I thought that the
xml-object that Gavin wrote did build a tree of objects. However I seem to
recall that the parser was not entirely complete.
Gavin's comments in his scripts indicate that he was going for the SAX event
model approach? I didn't look any further than that (call me slack...).
> > XML/Workbook/DocumentProperties/Author: "Andrew Martin"
> How many instances of these would be literally in your code, or would you
need to build them up in other code?
I'm uncertain about that at this point. I know that I can relatively easily
build up path! values in Rebol.
> If we write a program to access a cell from the row in this example are we
implicitly encoding the structure of XML (DTD) into a program?
I think that's unavoidable; after all some program eventually has to
understand the structure to work with it. I feel that the goal for 'Load-XML
is get rid of a lot of "drag" in checking for end-tags and so on;
refactoring out the common code in converting XML to Rebol values.
> By the way does namespaces represent contracts for behaviour, or are they
like rebol objects - a way to provide seperate contexts, or are they both?
I know very little about namespaces. I think they could be modeled as a
context (or object!) in Rebol.
> I think that if you consider the different ways you might want to process
the XML you will find different representations that can be useful.
Can anyone think of alternative representations of a XML document? There is:
* Text;
* SAX or event model;
* DOM or tree model;
* _________________;
> Also if a DTD (are these obsolete yet?) is available - the extra
information might have an impact. E.g using a DTD maybe a program could be
generated that knows how to traverse the XML implicitly (because it was
generated to do so).
I think a DTD parser could be very helpful in writing a generic XML script
that does generic things.
> Not being much help am I? :^)
Thanks, Brett! :)
Andrew J Martin
ICQ: 26227169
http://www.rebol.it/Valley/
http://valley.orcon.net.nz/
http://Valley.150m.com/
