Hello [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 13-Feb-00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> You can parse or create XML files with routines written in Java or
>> Rebol.
>>
>> Rebol is a programming language which doesn't really dictate any
>> particular format for data files, although some might be easier to
>> handle in Rebol than others.
>>
>> There is a good book called "XML and Java", covering parsing routines
>> (classes) etc. I can easily imagine a book called "XML and Rebol", or
>> "Creating WML, HTML and XML with Rebol".
>
>
> I guess having to parse XML is one of the reasons I asked my question
> about using REBOL in place of XML.
>
> If given a choice, why would I use XML to store data and then have to
> use another language to parse and operate on it rather than just
> storing the data as REBOL and have it automatically parsed and usable
> by REBOL?
If it's your own data and only you want to access it, you can store it
how you like.
XML is an agreed, standardised and widely used format. If you want a
data format that can be accessed by anybody, an XML format would be
worth considering. (HTML is to be replaced by an XML version of HTML, for
instance.)
If in the future Rebol becomes as widespread as XML, and if the data
format is completely open and stable, then a Rebol-based format might be
a valid alternative to XML. At present, Rebol is a proprietary language
which is still under development and is subject to unilaterally decided
changes.
Although the borderline between languages and data formats is fuzzy, I
think Rebol is a language and XML is a family of data formats.
Regards
--
Don Cox
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
