[XML-SIG] Useless fun thing for XML - comments or helpers?

[Fredrik Lundh]

>1) XML is case sensitive. How about lowercase or CamelCase for the element
>type names.?

CamelCase!?  Look what the CamelFolks have to say about that:

    Also, instead of writing your variables with leading caps for
    all of the words like this: MyVariableForLoop. We should instead
    use the underscore and write it like this: my_variable_for_loop.
    [tchrist] gave several good reasons, including the fact that Perl
    is now a global language and it can be hard for those who speak
    English as a second language to read the variables. Also, we are
    used to having spaces in words so it makes it more readable for
    us too.
    (http://www.perl.com/pace/pub/perldocs/1998/08/show/day4.html)

On the other hand, they also say:

    ...if we need comments in our code, then we didn't write it
    properly...

which only shows that one might as well ignore them...

>2) The characters "<" and "&" are special in XML and must be escaped if they
>occur as part of the content (in URL's for example you can have "&").
>This does not effect your DTD, but needs to be born in mind when generating
>XBEL files. "&" -> "&amp;". "<" -> "&lt;"

Hey, my class did that...

>3) In XML there are no standard ways of specifying lexical structure in
>PCDATA (yet). Attributes give better (but still unsatisfactory) control.
>I am thinking primarily of the date element type.
>
><date yyyy = "2005" mm = "12" dd = "01"/>

Ouch! ;-)

>I suggest we keep it all very simple for now! Even as it stands a tool like
>sgrep - structured grepping - really shows up the advantage of XBEL.

sgrep?  Is this an existing utility?  Where do I find it?

Cheers /F
fredrik@pythonware.com
http://www.pythonware.com