Aaron Konstam wrote:
Well I have looked at four books on XML in every one the statement is found that the purpose of XML is allow data used by various applications to be stored in a standard format.
It is a standard way to represent name/value sets. What names you use and what the values represent need another layer of standards.
Now I will admit I began to believe that style sheets were necessary to convert XML into pdf files or html files the existence of xmlto on the Linux machines lulled me into the illusion that these stylesheets existed in conjunction with that command otherwise what would xmlto be good for? As it is even after reading about xml in 4 books I find the conclusion that xml is essentially useless. But I know that is not true, so I remain confused.
By itself, the main value of xml is that a standard parser can extract the names/values in a portable way and if you use a DTD you can check that the values are valid. Beyond that you need some agreement on what the names/values mean. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
