What is the score with XML

[Titus A Ducksass - AKA broken-record]

Apart from it being a long winded way of setting up and categorising
data what is the point?

I know there must be a reasonable reason for it.

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[Hywel Jenkins]

Apart from it being a long winded way of setting up and categorising
data what is the point?

I know there must be a reasonable reason for it.

It's portable. Supposing you are writing a novel - save it as XML then
you can easily re-task the same data for print, web, PDA, whatever
output you want.

 

[Titus A Ducksass - AKA broken-record]

It's portable. Supposing you are writing a novel - save it as XML then
you can easily re-task the same data for print, web, PDA, whatever
output you want.

? Now I am more confused.
How can it be used for a novel?
<Chapter> ahsfblksdjhfsaj </Chapter
....

I can slightly understand it for data but am confused wholesale.
Is there anything that describes what/why in lay men's terms...

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[Oli Filth]

? Now I am more confused.
How can it be used for a novel?
<Chapter> ahsfblksdjhfsaj </Chapter
...

I can slightly understand it for data but am confused wholesale.
Is there anything that describes what/why in lay men's terms...

<A message to top posters. Type your reply here>

Just like HTML is designed as a standardised way of representing
structured data suitable for display on a human-readable browser, XML is
designed as a standardised way of representing any structured data,
whatever its meaning.

AFAIK, the hope being that in the future documents will be much more
portable, as applications would all be able to understand each others'
file formats (well, the structure of them, anyway).

Oli

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

? Now I am more confused.
How can it be used for a novel?
<Chapter> ahsfblksdjhfsaj </Chapter

Pretty much:
<novel>
<author>Hywel Jenkins</author>
<title>I'm In Charge</title>
<chapter>
<chaptertitle>Chapter One</chaptertitle>
<text>
<paragraph>This is a paragraph</paragraph>
<paragraph>This is another paragraph</paragraph>
</text>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<chaptertitle>Chapter Two</chaptertitle>
<text>
<paragraph>This is a paragraph</paragraph>
<paragraph>This is another paragraph</paragraph>
</text>
</chapter>
</novel>

 

[Toby Inkster]

Just like HTML is designed as a standardised way of representing
structured data suitable for display on a human-readable browser, XML is
designed as a standardised way of representing any structured data,
whatever its meaning.

XML is not so much a standard way of representing data, but rather it's
an easy(-ish) framework for creating new markup languages.