ok , got that, that made/makes sense...i had sorta figgered that out, when i had already hit "Send"...so then, dave, whats ur take on using css-2 to format that xml doc, into html? or would you use xsl to transform the xml to html?
tony -----Original Message----- From: Dave Watts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2002 3:45 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: xml question > If i have a DTD for an xml document that i am > getting back, as a response from a webservice, whats > the easiest way to take that xml feed that i get > back, and format for a web page (using that DTD?) I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of a DTD, which is not to provide formatting instructions, but rather to validate a given XML document that references the DTD. A DTD lists all of the possible elements, their possible attributes, and the hierarchical relationship between those elements. An XML parser can then parse the XML document. If the document can be parsed by the XML parser, it is said to be "well-formed", meaning that it adheres to the generic syntactical rules of XML. The XML parser may then check the document against the DTD, to make sure that it follows the rules specified in that DTD. If the document passes that test, it is said to be "valid". None of this has anything to do with formatting; the main point of XML (to greatly oversimplify things here) is to separate data from device-specific formatting, which is the problem with HTML. If you want to format an XML document for display on a specific device, such as an HTML browser, you'd typically transform the XML document into another language, like XHTML. The standard way to do this is to write an XSL transform, which is basically an XML document itself, which contains rules for converting a document in one XML language to some other format. Most XML parsers are capable of taking an XML document and applying an XSL transformation to that document. In CF MX, you'd use the XMLTransform function for this. In CF MX, you'd use whatever XML parser you're already using. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ voice: (202) 797-5496 fax: (202) 797-5444 ______________________________________________________________________ Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
