Re: [tlug] OT: XML?

[Martin Baehr <mbaehr@example.com>]

On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 01:03:06PM +0900, Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
> Can anyone point me to any ressource that explain *why* and *how* XML can be 
> put to good use on a rather simple web site?

xml is a means to an end not an end to itself.
the main use of xml is to structure data 
in a format that is easely parsable.

just putting xml files on a website for download won't help you.
most browsers don't understand xml.  mozilla has an xml parser, but
i have not yet figured out what it is usefull for other than
validating xml files (why do i need that in a browser?)
other than that, you don't see much.
to display xml in a browser you need to transform it to html.

on a website xml can be usefull if you want to seperate data from design.
seperating data from design allows you to change data without 
touching the design, and vice versa. it allows you to present 
the same data in different formats (without colors for printing, 
no graphics for the blind...) and allows reuse of the same design
for many pages. however these things can also be achived using
other formats (eg. storing things in a database or even in files
in html itself)

xml is only usefull here because there are standards to combine 
data and design making it easy to move your data and design 
to any other server and have them work.
the downside here is that xslt which is used for this purpose
is extremly ugly and verbose. it is essentially the attempt to
use xml for a programminglanguage. 
(i am using xml for the data part only and created my own ways
to transform it to html)

xml does not really help you to make a website easier to search
unless you want to create a special purpose searchengine that allows
you to search in specific parts of the data.

i don't have any urls or books that i could suggest, i never read any
all the above is based on my own experience and experimenting.

greetings, martin.
-- 
i am looking for a job anywhere in the world, doing pike programming,
caudium/pike/roxen training, roxen/caudium and/or unix system administration.
--
pike programmer                        (www.archlab|(www|db).hb2).tuwien.ac.at
unix                (iaeste|bahai).or.at                   iaeste.tuwien.ac.at 
systemadministrator (stuts|black.linux-m68k).org        is.(schon.org|root.at)
Martin B"ahr        http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/