I built a text file to described the menu interface for the LCD front panels my employer makes.
Initialy I did this as an NDB-like file. I added the concept of a "end" keyword to terminate a hierarchal block, and allowed a freestanding token to imply a boolean token=true. The DTD for this format was defined in another text file which was massaged by a few lines of awk into an initialised table, compiled into all applications that read the files (the format was fixed). People didn't like it as it was not "standard XML" so when I have the chance to rework it I went for XML and a DTD. Personally I prefer the NDB style implementation, my compiled in spec gave much more accurate validation than a DTD, and this was lightweight enought to be easily be done on the embedded system. Overall, having completed the changes a year or so ago, XML seems to have added a load more angle brackets, quotes and poorer validation, in return for no real reward. But at least my files are now standard, so thats ok. -Steve
