[XML-SIG] XML/python approach to "smooshing docs together"?

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Will Partain
| 
| How might you define, precisely, such a "smooshing together"
| system?

Well, the first thing you need to do is to define your operation much
better. Are you looking for something that is general for all XML
documents? If so, what are the rules for 'smooshing'? Or is this
operation specific to your configuration data? If it is, are you sure
that the best thing to do is to implement it on the XML level?

I think my advice to you is to clarify your question.  Are you looking
for help in figuring out what it is you want, or do you know what you
want and am seeking implementation design help.
 
| I can imagine something similar prevails in a document world.
| Imagine a "general info about something" document and a "site-local
| info about the same something" document; how do those get "smooshed
| together"?  It seems like there is a useful general problem to be
| solved...

One way to handle this problem that I've seen is to use inheritance.
The documents are arranged in folders, folders and documents both have
metadata properties and some properties are inherited from folders to
sub-folders and contained documents. In some cases inheritance may
also be overridden. This has worked fairly well in some cases.

Another way to handle this is the approach taken by topic maps, which
define how two topics can be merged when one discovers that they are
really one and the same thing. However, topic maps deal with this
through the concept of scope, which is non-trivial to translate to
XML.

--Lars M.