[...] XML is just data given structure by putting it between starting and ending tags. Though an increasing number of applications use it for data storage, its primary benefit is in exchanging data with other apps.
So once you find a task for which XML would be a good way to exchange data, find out which tags the others apps use and parse those out to get the data you're after.
Richard, you are the king of commonsense! This simple idea has made me more aware of the **idea** of XML than many another text I have had the misfortune to read.
The other bit of info about the **principles** of XML that is missing for me is the answer to the question:
"If XML tags and structures can be made to represent pretty well anything, how does the user community for a particular dialect/ language/ data model expressed in XML communicate? I mean, if a particular set of XML tags and structures is about chemical compounds or the parts of a bicycle or whatever, is there a generalised metalinguistic way of defining what the representation means, or does the community share some more or less informal description and then conform to that?"
Good luck to Andrew - I'd like a report about how he gets on!
Graham
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Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France
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