[REBOL] Re: REBOL and XML
From: sunandadh:aol at: 20-Mar-2003 12:19
Gabriele:
> what would you expect the standard actions (FIRST, NEXT, PICK
> etc.) to do on TEST?
>
I'd expect behaviour similar to that of XSLT -- though perhaps not quite the
same --XSLT is (basically) derived from Haskell and so is pure-functional,
side-effect free. That leads to (in my opinion) very convoluted programming
to do simple things.
So I'd expect the behaviour to make sense when compared with the same
function on a list or block. Plus we'd need a few extra navigation controls
for parent or next-child-within-parent.
Of course those sorts of controls can get inelegant and messy. As I've said
before (and Bryan disagrees) strictly hierarchical structures are a big
mistake. But they are a dominant data format for information interchange.
> Re: size of data, should something like:
>
> test: to xml! %data.xml
>
> work on the file instead of loading the data into memory?
>
A neat way to do it would be to make XML! analogous to File! I can open it in
memory -- that gives me a full set of DOM-style functions. Or I can open a
port -- that gives me bigger data structures while being limited to SAX-style
navigation.
As you can see -- I'm not answering your questions in terms of precise
expectations and syntax. It's maybe too early to tie down what an XML! data
type (or XML scheme) should do. I'd just like to underline the point that
REBOL will be better prepared for today's data structures once it has
industrial-strength XML handling.
That doesn't have to be built into the language, of course, we could do it
ourselves as a collaborative project. Though it'd be a big plus if it was.
Sunanda.
