Sponsored by TWIST - Tablet Weavers International Studies & Techniques
>I propose there is first the need to describe the concepts of SGML as an
>overview for all participants of the list not being computer experts
>here to understand what a DTD is and what XML files are? Isn't it?
Good point. So here's a quick explanation for those who don't know about XML:
You can think of XML as similar to HTML, the language used to write web
pages which many people are familiar with. (Like HTML, XML is a subset of
the language Guido mentioned - SGML.) In HTML, information is surrounded by
"tags" which tell you what to do with that information. The same is true of
XML, except that you are not restricted to a predefined set of tags - you
can define your own.
So, for example, looking at this excerpt from one of the GTT files:
<Pattern Type="Threaded"> <Pattern> is a
tag for an element
It
has one attribute - Type
<Name><![CDATA[Braid]]></Name> <Name> is a "child"
element of <Pattern>
and
in this case, the value is "Braid"
<Cards Count="24"> <Cards> is
also a child element of Pattern,
and
has one attribute Count which is set to 24.
You get the idea. I don't think we need to worry about DTD at this point. A
DTD file is just used to verify an XML file - it expresses things like
which elements must be there, what type of attributes those elements can
have, etc. They are tedious to write, but fairly straightforward once you
know what you want in the XML file. To me, the hardest thing about
designing XML formats is deciding what should be a child element and what
should be an attribute of the parent element. Sometimes the choice is
obvious, sometimes not.
To summarize - XML is basically self-describing ascii data. The beauty of
it is that it can be used to communicate that data between two people,
between a person and a computer program, or between two computer programs.
This makes it much more flexible than proprietary formats. It also makes it
easy to split things in a modular way - maybe one program has a GUI editor
that I like to use, but I prefer the weaving display in another, and maybe
a third program has a feature that lets me import a B&W image into a
double-faced design.
A couple of months ago, I started working on a format for tabletweaving XML
files. Naturally, Eckhard's gtt files are somewhat different. But I think
it would be a fairly manageable task to have a group discussion on what
might be good for a "standard" tabletweaving XML file.
Anybody interested in discussing this further?
Deanna
Send private reply to Deanna Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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