[REBOL] Re: Interesting Article on repurposing software
From: bry:itnisk at: 29-Oct-2003 12:02
M> So the only thing I can see here important is that document content
is
M> really what matter and XML can easily make you parse through it
without
M> messing around with the layout and appareance. The sort of thing it
was
M> though for.
>Right, the big bonus I see with REBOL is that your data format can be
>much easier for people to work with--and no more difficult for
>machines--than XML.
Again as I noted before REBOL's format does not seem to me to be a good
format for a document structure. The benefit of xml is it can be used
for flat data:
<people>
<person>Joe Applebaum</person>
<person>Fritz Frantzaum</person>
</people>
to document style data:
<body> here's some text
<p>hello <list><item>item 1</item><item>item 2</item></list></p>
</body>
to hierarchical data:
<people>
<person>
<name>
<first-name>Joe</first-name>
<last-name>Applebaum</last-name>
</name>
</person>
</people>
furthermore structures can be extended in various ways:
processing instructions:
<body> here's some text <?call-rebol now/year ?>
<p>hello <list><item>item 1</item><item>item 2</item></list></p>
</body>
which are passed on to the calling application.
Or namespaces:
<body xmlns:r="http://www.rebol.com"><r:word>now</r:word> here's some
text
<p>hello <list><item>item 1</item><item>item 2</item></list></p>
</body>
which dependent on an xml dialect processor can be processed thru,
ignored, or do something else.
>Behind the scenes, we can generate whatever we want, but from an
>interaction perspective, what is the best solution or the most natural
>way to work with this kind of information?
The problem is not generating data from a customer's input, the problem
is working with data that a customer has elsewhere. It could be a
database, it could be twenty thousand word files they've got lying
around.
> That's where I'm
>coming from. For example, how would a dialected REBOL solution compare
>to a GUI built with Java that generates the XSL, and eventually
>produces an XML file which is then repurposed?
I guess we're back to what FOA is doing, I don't necessarily think that
FOA's solution is a good one, considering that I think I've built a
better one.
Most visual xslt generators are crap as well, as is the case with most
tools that generate code visually imho.
