[XML-SIG] ANN: SLiP and SLIDE - a quick XML shorthand syntax and tool for editing

[Uche Ogbuji]

> [Scott Sweeney]
> 
> > Announcing...
> >
> > SLiP 0.1: a "Sorta Like Python" shorthand syntax for XML
> > SLIDE 0.1: a "Sorta Like an IDE" lightweight windows exe for SLiP editing
> > SLiPpy 0.1: a SLiP package for Python, including a SLiP->XML library
> > (sliplib.py) and source for SLIDE (slide.py)
> >
> > http://www.scottsweeney.com/projects/slip
> 
> This is nice work, Scott.  It's somewhat like a format I made up awhile ago,
> although I don't use the "()".  I wrote a parser that throws SAX events so
> you can serialize or build DOM trees with standard SAX handlers.
> 
> Here's the example from Scott's web page in my format -
> 
> test::
>     bookmark::
>         url::http://www.google.com
>         title::Google
>     bookmark::
>         url::http://www.idiosync.net
>         title::idiosync
> ; This is a comment line
> ; PCDATA content starts on the same line, after the "::"
> 
> I use "::" instead of ":" so you can use prefixed names.  You can put
> attributes in by prefixing them with "@", like so:
> 
> location::
>     @xlink:href::http://www.example.com
> 
> Either way, these little indented text formats are wonderful for whipping
> out hand-authored XML.  I've done topic maps among other things with my
> flavor.  Should be good for RELAX NG too.

It feels as if you two must have fundamental implementation differences in our 
systems, but is there a way to merge them, and put together a standard XML-SIG 
proposal for an indented short-hand for XML?

If so, I suspect we could have another XBEL-grade success on our hands.  I 
think the people who have to deal with editing XML by hand are profusely 
scattered far beyond te Python community.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 720 320 2046
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
XML strategy, XML tools (http://4Suite.org), knowledge management
Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston): 
http://www.xmlconference.com/