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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 22:54:48 -0200 (GMT+2)
Subject: Re: [lojban] le stura be la gihuste - XML
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To: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Cc: Lojban List <lojban@egroups.com>
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From: John Leuner <jewel@pixie.co.za>
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> >As for the implementation of these ideas, the best thing would be an
> >XML-like database format. Unfortunately, I do not (yet) know much about
> >XML parsers and therefore did not bother working on an appropriate set of
> >XML tags.
> 
> I have no idea even what XML is, and the only kind of parser I know 
> anything about is a YACC parser (and not much even then).

XML is an extremely popular way of representing structured data. It allows
you to put your data in a file where a tag indicates what "field" that
data belongs to. I'm busy working on a java version of logflash and I have
this xml document to specify what "piles" are used:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<Levels>
  <Level name="Under Control" count="0" type="TYPE_RECALL" match="Under Control" dontmatch="Recalled 1x"/>
  <Level name="Recalled 1x" count="1" type="TYPE_RECALL" match="Under Control" dontmatch="Recognised 3x"/>
  <Level name="Recognised 3x" count="1" type="TYPE_RECALL" match="Recalled 1x" dontmatch="Recognised 2x"/>
  <Level name="Recognised 2x" count="1" type="TYPE_RECOGNISE" match="Recognised 3x" dontmatch="Recognised 1x"/>
  <Level name="Recognised 1x" count="1" type="TYPE_RECOGNISE" match="Recognised 2x" dontmatch="Drop Back"/>
  <Level name="Drop Back" count="1" type="TYPE_RECOGNISE" match="Recognised 1x" dontmatch="Drop Back"/>
  <Level name="New Word" count="1" type="TYPE_RECOGNISE" dest="Recognised 1x" match="Recognised 1x" dontmatch="Drop Back"/>
</Levels>
 
This doesn't really demonstrate normal use of XML, because usually you
have tags within tags, eg:

<GISMULIST>
 <GISMUENTRY>
    <rafsi text="bef"/>
    <rafsi text="be'u"/>
    <keyword text="abdomen" lang="english"/>
    <keyword text="belly" lang="english"/>
	
    <DEFINITION>
	<keyword text="lower trunk" lang="english"/>
	<crossref type="lojban" subtype="lujvo" text="djaruntyrango">
	<crossref type="nonlojban" text="stomach">
    </DEFINITION>
    <DEFINITION>
	//other definition stuff here
    </DEFINITION>
 </GISMUENTRY>
 <GISMUENTRY>
	//Entry for kakne here
 </GISMUENTRY>
</GISMULIST>

The power of XML is that it is platform-agnostic (UNIX/Windows/ ..
whatever), it is popular (hence there are many freely available tools) and
language-agnostic (you can use C, Java, Pascal  or whatever you like).

For the programmer or person entering / editing data it's very powerful
because the part of the software that reads and interprets the syntax of
the file is provided by the XML parser. This means less work for the
programmer and makes it very easy to write a program that converts from
the XML to some other format.

What I haven't said about XML here is that it allows you to specify a type
of "grammar" which dicates or controls the format of the XML document. In
conjunction with the "grammar" you can easily check for the syntactic
correctness of a document, making life easier for someone editing the
document and for a program that has to read the document.

John Leuner